The/. title of this article is wrong, stupid and misleading.
Seconded.
Just to clarify, the only thing that's changing here is the dispersion relationship. In graphene the energy of carriers grows linearly with momentum due to strong spin-orbit coupling. In most materials the energy grows proportional to the momentum squared. People have known for a long time that you can do all sorts of things to graphene to change the dispersion relationship so that it acts like other materials. For a bit of a overview see http://www.lbl.gov/publicinfo/newscenter/pr/2008/ALS-graphene-electrons.html
There may not yet be any consumer devices that use graphene, but they are coming up fast. Now that Korean scientists know how to produce high quality graphene in bulk with roll-to-roll processing, it will probably start replacing indium tin oxide as the transparent electrode of choice in flat displays: http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v5/n8/abs/nnano.2010.132.html
Graphene will also probably appear in next-generation chemical sensors -- its so thin that individual molecules adsorbed on it can have measurable changes in its electrical properties: http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v6/n9/full/nmat1967.html
I don't know if Geim anticipated either of these, but I wouldn't be surprised. An interesting comparison is the story of Peter Gruenberg who did patent his Nobel Prize-winning discovery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gr%C3%BCnberg I wonder how much money he actually saw from the patent though. GMR-based hard drives are a multi-billion dollar industry, but there are hundreds of knock-off patents floating around too...
So true, I'm glad I'm not the only one that this has happened to. The summer after my first year in undergrad I worked in a lab where our PI kept the temperature around 50 to protect equipment. At one point I had to resort to keeping a heat gun set to low pointing across the desk at my frozen fingers. Good luck!
Huh, I have had good luck with a Wacom tablet as a mouse replacement with my desktop at home, but I guess the handheld devices require a different wrist position? Thanks for the head's up, I'll try one carefully before I think about buying. My condition is actually way better than it was a few years ago, mostly because I use computers far less on average (maybe 20-30 hrs per week). I can probably go 6-8 hours without any wrist pain above what Naproxen (Aleve) takes care of as long as I use the mouse only minimally. Good luck.
Hi klui, thanks for the advice. I had one of the microsoft split keyboard at home, but now have a smaller desk at home and it doesn't fit along with my intuos3. It did help some though, I need to also get one for work where I spend much more time on the computer now. You are right that my problem with trackpads was originally fingertip sensitivity, but the last time I tried it was that I have to either hold up my hand to use them, or rest the base of the palm on the top of the laptop, both of which irritate my wrist. I think you're right that I had the surface too high when trying to use one, I probably had my arms curled closer than would be normal. I'll borrow someone's laptop this week and see if I can figure out a good position. Good luck to you too -A
What does it take to have a setup so bad that you get RSI? A couple of bricks in front of the keyboard as wrist rests?
Almost. Our family computer desk had a low wooden chair which didn't bring my wrists up anywhere near the level of the desk, and I ended up always hunching my shoulders and lifting my arms out in front of me at a strange angle. It was ok setup if you just had to check email or something, but I spent much too long on it. Yeah, I should have spent more time reading the warning that's always on the bottom of keyboards.
I've been thinking that I really only need a lightweight device to read papers and take notes on, which is why I was hoping to avoid something where I would need to bring a separate mouse and keyboard for, since I can usually just go to my office if I need to do a lot of work. That being said, the vertical mouse looks like it would be perfect for me to use with my desktop -- I have definitely noticed that not turning my wrist inwards helps a lot which is rather awkward with a normal mouse. Thanks for the advice.
I decided not to do comp sci after I hurt my wrists during my senior year in high school, and I'm now a graduate student in solid state physics. I found a project which involves a lot of fabrication, so I don't have to spend all day on the computer. I occasionally have to write code to interface with equipment, and do a decent bit of word processing. It's not too bad although I manage all my citations in zotero ( http://www.zotero.org/ ) which is an excellent program but unfortunately mouse-intensive. Mostly I just read papers, although I do also spend a lot of time working on scanning electron microscopes and similar systems (these almost universally have horrible input systems, see for example all the knobs on http://www.nano.lth.se/data/nanometer/files/image/sem.gif )
At home I usually use a Wacom Intuos3 (http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Intuos3-6-Inch-Format-PTZ431W/dp/B000I62PEU/ref=acc_glance_e_ai_purchase_similarities_t_3) which works pretty well since I can use the pen (in mouse mode) while resting my hand on the side. The buttons on the side of the pen are not the best, so if I have to do a lot of clicking I usually alternate between that and a normal mouse. It's a bit bulky to carry around though which is why I was checking out the tablet-like computers. I'll take a look at the ozupad, thanks. -A
I went through a lot more than three months of physical therapy in total, although most of it was focused on stretches rather than building strength. Luckily my hand and forearm strength was never affected and is still quite good.
In my previous lab group we used a mediawiki install to keep track of microelectronic devices that several people were working on at the same time. These devices were still under development so most of the data was qualitative -- images, profilometry data, IV/CV curves were all stored on the wiki page for each sample, and each page included a recipe for exactly how it was made, which made it easy to trouble shoot later. It worked pretty well for what we used it for, but once we had a working device all the in-depth data for that sample was kept separately.
This seemed like a half-decent way of cataloging samples, although one would need something a bit more robust for complex data sets that don't integrate well with a wiki.
How is your math background? You could get a masters in applied math and then go on to do all sorts of things -- from working in any number of fields to doing further graduate work on things like fluid dynamics or solid state physics.
I also like the computational physics suggestion (being a physics grad myself), but it might be hard to get into an interesting program right away depending on your background. Good luck!
BEGIN RANT
Seriously, North Carolina State University (NCSU in Raleigh) is not the University of North Carolina (typically in reference to Chapel Hill). One is a school (that I happened to have attended twice) that focuses primarily on Engineering and Agriculture and the other is a liberal arts school down the road. Seriously, fact-check much? http://www.mse.ncsu.edu/CAMSS/bio1.html
END RANT
UNC now also has a cleanroom and the physics department does a lot of nanotechnology, but this guy is definitely at NCSU.
Slashdot Mirror
The /. title of this article is wrong, stupid and misleading.
Seconded. Just to clarify, the only thing that's changing here is the dispersion relationship. In graphene the energy of carriers grows linearly with momentum due to strong spin-orbit coupling. In most materials the energy grows proportional to the momentum squared. People have known for a long time that you can do all sorts of things to graphene to change the dispersion relationship so that it acts like other materials. For a bit of a overview see http://www.lbl.gov/publicinfo/newscenter/pr/2008/ALS-graphene-electrons.html
There may not yet be any consumer devices that use graphene, but they are coming up fast. Now that Korean scientists know how to produce high quality graphene in bulk with roll-to-roll processing, it will probably start replacing indium tin oxide as the transparent electrode of choice in flat displays: http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v5/n8/abs/nnano.2010.132.html Graphene will also probably appear in next-generation chemical sensors -- its so thin that individual molecules adsorbed on it can have measurable changes in its electrical properties: http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v6/n9/full/nmat1967.html I don't know if Geim anticipated either of these, but I wouldn't be surprised. An interesting comparison is the story of Peter Gruenberg who did patent his Nobel Prize-winning discovery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gr%C3%BCnberg I wonder how much money he actually saw from the patent though. GMR-based hard drives are a multi-billion dollar industry, but there are hundreds of knock-off patents floating around too...
So true, I'm glad I'm not the only one that this has happened to. The summer after my first year in undergrad I worked in a lab where our PI kept the temperature around 50 to protect equipment. At one point I had to resort to keeping a heat gun set to low pointing across the desk at my frozen fingers. Good luck!
Huh, I have had good luck with a Wacom tablet as a mouse replacement with my desktop at home, but I guess the handheld devices require a different wrist position? Thanks for the head's up, I'll try one carefully before I think about buying. My condition is actually way better than it was a few years ago, mostly because I use computers far less on average (maybe 20-30 hrs per week). I can probably go 6-8 hours without any wrist pain above what Naproxen (Aleve) takes care of as long as I use the mouse only minimally. Good luck.
Hi klui, thanks for the advice. I had one of the microsoft split keyboard at home, but now have a smaller desk at home and it doesn't fit along with my intuos3. It did help some though, I need to also get one for work where I spend much more time on the computer now. You are right that my problem with trackpads was originally fingertip sensitivity, but the last time I tried it was that I have to either hold up my hand to use them, or rest the base of the palm on the top of the laptop, both of which irritate my wrist. I think you're right that I had the surface too high when trying to use one, I probably had my arms curled closer than would be normal. I'll borrow someone's laptop this week and see if I can figure out a good position. Good luck to you too -A
This is probably true to some extent. Several members of my family have problems with tendons on other joints (hips, knees, ankles).
What does it take to have a setup so bad that you get RSI? A couple of bricks in front of the keyboard as wrist rests?
Almost. Our family computer desk had a low wooden chair which didn't bring my wrists up anywhere near the level of the desk, and I ended up always hunching my shoulders and lifting my arms out in front of me at a strange angle. It was ok setup if you just had to check email or something, but I spent much too long on it. Yeah, I should have spent more time reading the warning that's always on the bottom of keyboards.
Also, I've heard a lot about Dvorak, most recently from some other students in my program ( http://thevirtuosi.blogspot.com/2010/09/paradigm-shifts-2-paradigm-shifter-last.html ). I guess I should go ahead and take the plunge some week when I don't have a lot of stuff I need to get done.
I've been thinking that I really only need a lightweight device to read papers and take notes on, which is why I was hoping to avoid something where I would need to bring a separate mouse and keyboard for, since I can usually just go to my office if I need to do a lot of work. That being said, the vertical mouse looks like it would be perfect for me to use with my desktop -- I have definitely noticed that not turning my wrist inwards helps a lot which is rather awkward with a normal mouse. Thanks for the advice.
I decided not to do comp sci after I hurt my wrists during my senior year in high school, and I'm now a graduate student in solid state physics. I found a project which involves a lot of fabrication, so I don't have to spend all day on the computer. I occasionally have to write code to interface with equipment, and do a decent bit of word processing. It's not too bad although I manage all my citations in zotero ( http://www.zotero.org/ ) which is an excellent program but unfortunately mouse-intensive. Mostly I just read papers, although I do also spend a lot of time working on scanning electron microscopes and similar systems (these almost universally have horrible input systems, see for example all the knobs on http://www.nano.lth.se/data/nanometer/files/image/sem.gif )
At home I usually use a Wacom Intuos3 (http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Intuos3-6-Inch-Format-PTZ431W/dp/B000I62PEU/ref=acc_glance_e_ai_purchase_similarities_t_3) which works pretty well since I can use the pen (in mouse mode) while resting my hand on the side. The buttons on the side of the pen are not the best, so if I have to do a lot of clicking I usually alternate between that and a normal mouse. It's a bit bulky to carry around though which is why I was checking out the tablet-like computers. I'll take a look at the ozupad, thanks. -A
exercise. seriously. these will fix you up in about 3 months: http://www.google.com/search?&q=hand+grip
I went through a lot more than three months of physical therapy in total, although most of it was focused on stretches rather than building strength. Luckily my hand and forearm strength was never affected and is still quite good.
Someone from D-wave is giving a talk called "separating hope from hype": http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/02/quantum.ars http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/20587/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems
Some graduate students in my department put together some simple models for zombie apocalypses and the results don't look well for humans: http://thevirtuosi.blogspot.com/2010/07/zombpocalypse.html
In my previous lab group we used a mediawiki install to keep track of microelectronic devices that several people were working on at the same time. These devices were still under development so most of the data was qualitative -- images, profilometry data, IV/CV curves were all stored on the wiki page for each sample, and each page included a recipe for exactly how it was made, which made it easy to trouble shoot later. It worked pretty well for what we used it for, but once we had a working device all the in-depth data for that sample was kept separately. This seemed like a half-decent way of cataloging samples, although one would need something a bit more robust for complex data sets that don't integrate well with a wiki.
How is your math background? You could get a masters in applied math and then go on to do all sorts of things -- from working in any number of fields to doing further graduate work on things like fluid dynamics or solid state physics. I also like the computational physics suggestion (being a physics grad myself), but it might be hard to get into an interesting program right away depending on your background. Good luck!
BEGIN RANT Seriously, North Carolina State University (NCSU in Raleigh) is not the University of North Carolina (typically in reference to Chapel Hill). One is a school (that I happened to have attended twice) that focuses primarily on Engineering and Agriculture and the other is a liberal arts school down the road. Seriously, fact-check much? http://www.mse.ncsu.edu/CAMSS/bio1.html END RANT
UNC now also has a cleanroom and the physics department does a lot of nanotechnology, but this guy is definitely at NCSU.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N_ray Apparently someone was jealous of Roentgen...