Everyday Scientist

chilled water

The chilled water system at Stanford has been basically down for the last month and—now that the weather is getting ridiculously hot—we’re on the brink of the apocalypse. We can’t run our big lasers because they need to be cooled by the chilled water and the temperature in the offices and some of the labs it approaching hott with two “t”s. I mean, my office is in the basement and I’m sweating; the offices upstairs and in Mudd building are much warmer than outside (where the temperature is 90 F).

Thankfully, the most essential locations on campus (like the hospital) still get chilled water routed to them. Also, LINX, a for-profit cafeteria on the first floor of the BioX building, still is nice and cool. Thank god!

Check out this link for more cool (ha!) facts.

Cornell researchers break Galileo codes

So a couple of researchers at Cornell broke the PRN codes for Europe’s Galileo GPS satellites. It’s a $4 billion dollar investment that, unlike the US satellites, was supported by private investors expecting to charge for access. Except they protected the system with codes that were broken in 1 week, without any serious computing power, using only Matlab and a dish receiver, by non-crypographers. There’s also a lot of background story to the issue, since the US doesn’t have the ability to turn Galileo off, should we decide who’s next to liberate.

The first satellite was at 36 degrees declination from NY, so I’m not sure if its visible from CA, but here’s the PRN. Maybe they’ll do a better job next time.

is that a laser in your pocket?

This letter in J. Chem. Phys. reports using a red laser pointer (the kind you get on keychains) as a ultra-cheap excitation source for spectroscopy. Here are the first few lines of the letter:

To get straight to the point of this note, Fig. 1 shows I₂ absorption spectra recorded on a UV-visible spectrophotometer (Shimadzu UV2101PC), using as light source an inexpensive key-chain-type red laser pointer (< $5, from China, but no stated manufacturer). Other measurements show that >98% of the light produced by these devices comes in a single longitudinal mode. The spectral resolution exceeds that in the comparison spectrum, which was obtained with a very high quality Fourier transform instrument.

Years ago, members of Moerner lab used a green laser pointer as a 532-nm excitation source and imaged single-molecules. I just love when toys start to surpass high-end technology.

reporting from the GRC

I’m here at the Gordon Conference on Single Molecule Approaches To Biology in New London, NH. When I get back to CA, I’ll get back to writing the blog…

nature’s peer review trial

The journal Nature has decided to perform a new trial peer review process. Check it out here. During a trial period, authors who submit articles to the journal for publication can opt to have their manuscripts available on an open forum, where the whole world can read and comment on the preprint. The normal review process would occur in parallel, but the editors (and presumably reviewers) can read the public comments and take those into consideration in their decision to publish.

I think this is sorta weird. I mean, do we really want the entire world reading our preprints before they are accepted? I mean, there’s a reason we try to keep the entire public out of the loop a little: there are a lot of crazies out there! For instance, I don’t really know anything about Ivor Catt, but he sure seems crazy. Well, I guess it will be sorta like arXiv. I’m not completely opposed to the idea, I just don’t think it’s the best first step in correcting the peer review process.

The first thing I would do is change the half-blind style of reviewing: reviewers know who wrote the paper they are reviewing, but the author never knows who accepted or rejected their manuscript. This is silly. Reviewing should either be fully double-blind or fully open. I lean toward double-blind, anonymous reviewing: I can’t think of any good reason either the reviewer or the author should know the name of the other. The alternative (double-unblind?) would mean more accountability, but might encourage personal vendettas. The current scheme means that the reviewer isn’t accountable—and can either let vendettas fly or let a manuscript slide in by the merits of the author.

Well, I admit that I haven’t really thought about this enough. There’s a lot more to discuss on this topic, but maybe that could be for another post, another day. Or we could head over to the Nature discussion forum on peer review.

Ahh the Onion, so funny it hurts!

This administration has lost its sanity when it comes to “national security.” This story from the Onion is a little dated, but feels more applicable than ever:

Physics T.A. Not Born In U.S.

September 18, 1996 | Issue 30•06

AUSTIN, TX—Scandal rocked the University of Texas Monday, when it was learned that Bin Lu, a 28-year-old physics teaching assistant, was not born in the U.S., but rather in China. “We are investigating this matter fully,” said C. Thomas Brady, Director of Administrative Affairs at the school. “How a foreigner infiltrated our system, and got through our exhaustive set of security clearance checks, is a question we must answer.” Brady vowed to get to the bottom of the matter.

and the original link.

gimzewski

I just hosted Prof. Jim Gimzewski from UCLA for a student-hosted talk. Very strange talk; on the same level as Barry Sharpless in its absurdity. But it was really enjoyable if you just let him take you on a journey … to nowhere, really.

I suspect many people in the audience were expecting a more sciency—or coherent—talk, and this disappointed them. But there was certainly a fraction of us who really loved it. What a wonderful break from the usual science talk. He was rambling about Buddhist Atomism, where what we see is a movie of atom-things flashing in and out of existence. And the sounds a butterfly makes while in the chrysalis. And sticky cells. And an outfit designed to mimick protein folding. And dancing representing the nano. All so strange.

Well, I’m not describing his talk very well, but you should just try to see him sometime. And Sharpless.

that sucks

Check out this retraction from the Vanden Bout group at UT-Austin. They had to retract three papers (including on Science paper) because (a) they can’t reproduce the raw data and (b) the analysis of the raw data wasn’t correct. Shit.

I’ve met Dave Vanden Bout, and he’s a really nice, smart guy. His group does good work. That’s why it’s so scary to see this retraction. What the hell happened? They were doing single-molecule studies in polymer films, so I suspect they had either bad polymer or impurities that screwed up their raw data. And it sounds like they used the wrong correlation function for their analysis. All three retracted papers came from one student. Maybe they discovered all this when a new student tried to continue her work after she left. I doubt there was any foul play here, just complex mistakes trying to get complex results.

This is why I never publish…

nanoluddites?

Recently, a “nano” cleaning product in Germany was recalled because several user suffered respiratory problems and some were admitted to the hospital after using the product. (Read about it in The Economist.) Now the nanosceptics are up in arms, claiming this as proof that nanotechnology poses severe health hazards. This doesn’t appear to be the case: similar symptoms have appeared with products not containing “nanotechnology” and other products with the same nano-ingredient don’t cause problems. The real cuplrit seems to be an anti-corrosion additive in the aerosol spray.

The nano-ingredient turns out to be colloidal silicate particles that lodge into cracks and crevices on the surface, reducing places that dirt can collect.

In this case, it seems that the nanoluddites are out to lunch, but are they crazy in general? It’s not inconceivable that nanoparticles could cause health risks, and there’s no real form of testing the safety of nanotech products. On the other hand, nature invented nanotechnology far before humans started making Windex with silicate particles in it—there are a lot of nano things around us everyday. On the third hand, everyday things can harm us (think asbestos).

I dunno. I hope that new products are tested for their safety, regardless of whether they are marketed as “nano” or not. And I’m curious whether some nanodevices will turn out to pose a health risk. But I suspect this is just another case of change scaring people.

Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) fires first President, Robert Laughlin.

A few years ago, KAIST made a bit of a stink at Stanford by hiring away Nobel Laurreatte Physicist Robert Laughlin to be their first University President (they paid him about $500,000 U.S. a year). This was part of South Korea’s new initiative to compete with Japan, China, and India in becoming the premier Asian science nation.

Laughlin immediately expressed his wish to make a variety of “radical” changes – privitazing the university and charging tuition, adding pre-medicine and pre-law departments, and focusing on undergraduate education as well as graduate education. Basically, he sought to “Westernize” the univeristy. He came under just-as-immediate attack by the faculty, who claimed he was hired not to make drastic changes, but to simply make the university more prominent in the world by just…well…being there.

Anyway, the Board of Trustees for the university voted unanimously not to renew his contract.

Laughlin claims that he wasn’t given clear expectations, and (according to rumor) has been heard commenting that the University was backwards compared to U.S. universities, and that it wanted notariety, not reform. The University claims that Laughlin alienated the professors and failed to provide a clear vision for KAIST’s future. Shortly before his removal, they also began a campaign focusing on “abuses” of funding for business trips to foreign countries.

Regardless of everything that’s happened, both sides do agree on one ting – that for KAIST to successfully undergo reform, it needs someone that’s familiar not only with science, but with South Korean culture and politics.

Sources: Science, The Korea Times, San Jose Mercury News

Global Climate and Energy Project

The latest Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) brochure recently came out.  It’s a $225 million Stanford Program, funded primarily by General Electric, Toyota, ExxonMobil, and Schlumberger, whose purpose is to fund environmentally-motivated research.  This involves everything from carbon dioxide sequestration to alternative fuel synthesis to hydrogen storage to fuel cell design.  It’s also what funds my research in part.

By the way…check out page 26 (28 in the pdf).

Source 

great headline: hope over laser ‘that melts fat’

The headline really says it all. Hell, stick your fat butt in front of our Ti-Sapph and I think you would probably melt some of that fat off…

Dance of the Black Holes

Two black holes in the Abel 400 cluster are dancing with each other right now, circling in a death spiral that, according to astronomers at the University of Virginia and NASA, will lead to a merging of the two.  The merger, expected in the next few million years, would create a super-black hole with the power consume a few billion stars.

Source – CNN.com

Cue your junior high-level humor

I keep having to check the dates on the recent science-oriented articles I find, just to make sure they’re not from April 1. The latest article was titled “Blue Ring Discovered Around Uranus.” What? Blue? Geez, what’s been going on there!? The astronomers seemed to expect the rings to be red, which is a rather common color for rings. But Blue? Uranus never surprised so many. Or smelled so much like Koolaid. (Bwa?) Source

Okay. And how about this one from a little while back: “Brain scan finds the penis at last.” Read more of this post…

xp in an apple anyone?

Apple announced that they’re going to offer a program that lets Windows be installed on their machines. Crazy! I never thought that would happen. I know there are already programs that let you do this, but now Apple is offering the program, called Boot Camp, itself. It’s official.