Except that we can measure the acceleration of the earth (rotation around the sun is obviously not a strait line, and easily measurable). So... yeah, you don't actually get the same results when you do the math for a point decoupled to the solar system and earth. No one outside of physics learns relativity, despite it being 100 year old science. Some may learn "pigeon" relativity, but that's not really helpful.
Sorry, that's also BS. Spinning on a sol-gel solution is neither expensive nor "nanostructuring," and that can get you an excellent coating. You can also paint on an effective coating. If you've ever seen a self-cleaning window, and you have if you've used a car, you've seen a very cheap and effective photoactive TiO2 layer in action.
The TiO2 in photochemical cells is never the expensive part. Platinum, ITO and the dye are all more expensive. These photoactive coatings are so cheap to produce they coat entire buildings with it in japan. It's a "pre-nanostructured" material. I realize there's a lot of research on nano-TiO2, but that's because people are still trying to figure out how it works, not because you need to use nano-scale material.
Why would you say this? Maybe you meant indium tin oxide, which is expensive... but no, you use that one, but don't mention that in the press release.
It's not likely that someone working with this protein, who has to purchase or make it for several thousand dollars per milligram makes this claim innocently (titanium dioxide is a few cents per gram, and GFP is already one of the most mass produced purified proteins out there, it's not going to get much cheaper anytime soon). Misleading blurbs like this are terrible for science; they propagate falsehoods and direct research funding away from promising sources.
Because a government is supported by taxes, backed by a military, not accountable to share holders and has several other special privileges.
Is this really confusing? A government is not the same as a private individual. This case perfectly demonstrates that. Why does the government have this helium? Did they pay for it, or just claim it? Did they pay for the storage space, or just claim it? Do they pay taxes on its sale? These are not hard things to think of.
I think you're confused. The price was set in the "Helium Privitization Act of 1996," that's simply a fact and has nothing to do with market forces.
When the government makes a law which says "we will sell our helium for $1.50 per cubic meter until it is gone" and that supply is 1/3 the global total market for two decades, the "market" has not set the price.
This is not about balloon animals, and it's not your typical media scare story.
I'm a condensed matter physicist. It's very common in my field to use helium to examine the properties of materials at very low temperatures. This is how things like superconductors and quantum computing are often worked on in their early stages. Using helium is important, and because universities don't like concentrated hydrogen (for safety reasons), pretty much required.
The current supply of helium is uncertain. Many research institutes (like the university I work at) have rationed helium. That is, we're allowed to buy a certain amount, and can't get more than that. This is set by the suppliers, who get their helium from the US government. The result is that my experiments compete with the experiments in particle physics, the medical school and other groups for helium. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I can't. From a practical viewpoint, we're not running out of helium in 2015, we're running out now.
There is helium available somewhere else, but there's no economic incentive for anyone to capture it and sell it. As long as stockpiles are sold off at fixed, below-market prices (TFA says helium should be 20 to 50 times more expensive), no one can economically afford to capture and purify the helium which is available. We're wasting the tail end of potential helium production (most in the stockpiles came from oil processing). Think of it this way: when oil runs out, helium runs out. We can replace oil much more cheaply than we can replace helium. Helium is too light an element to be captured by Earth's gravitational field this close to the sun, so that wasted helium is gone.
That's the strange part. It's pretty much an average microscope. It really doesn't make any sense why they're mentioning that. Expensive is more than $1 million. Cheap is less than $100 k.
As someone working on alternate (non-imaging) technologies, this is more than a bit annoying. Why did we chose this system? It's horribly slow, labor intensive, invasive and only helps against idiots who try to carry dense weapons on their person. The "wake-up call" terrorist who made it through metal detector security with a bomb strapped to his leg would also make it through these machines. Way to go.
There is no shortage of scientists and engineers willing to work for NASA. What they need is more political power. Perhaps a game where you build relationships with politicians, staffers and contractors, convincing them over several years that exploration is a worthy cause. I think they'll find enough welders.
I've spent the last 8 years training to become a professor. (Yeah, undergrad doesn't count.)
The "teaching" part of that training consisted of one class on teaching, and nine months of part-time teaching experience, which mainly consisted of grading. That was 7 years ago.
The "research" part of that training consisted of ~12 classes, and 7 years of full time research work. My faculty applications will be judged almost exclusively on my research experience and ideas. My professional advancement as a professor will also depend almost exclusively on my research.
There are exceptions to this, I'm generalizing.
Of course, if we really want to train people as well as we can, the apprenticeship model used in research labs works quite well (and fits well with the realities of the current research funding model). It's hands-on, small group, with personalized lectures and lots of opportunity for interaction and collaboration.
Is this a joke? Did someone put this paper up to smear someone's reputation? There isn't anything close to good data or analysis there. You can't put that out there.
Slashdot shouldn't be looking at this, it's embarrassing.
Why are you asking us anyway? You're at a national lab. Throw a rock. Whoever it hits, ask them how you can get into a position where you have a more active role in research. They'll have a much better, tailored, specific answer for you.
If these guys were serious about powering implants, they'd be using ATP or glucose. Heat and vibrations are nice, but a few more steps down the thermodynamic pipeline.
Plus, the good piezoelectrics are not exactly made of bio-friendly metals.
As an academic researcher, my interests vary depending on the latest developments in the field. It would be not wise for me to publicize these interests in a centralized list or even on my own webpage, as my competition would be more than happy to get some extra insight into what I'm trying and scoop me.
Thus, this problem is worse than you think. You can't even trust a professor's university webpage to give you an honest account of what they're currently working on. Perhaps clinical psychology is different, there's no competition and everyone is happy to give public monthly updates. I doubt it.
So, what to do? Some people here say read papers. If you can follow them, that's fine. Better to simply call or e-mail clinical psychologists and explain what kind of research you're looking for. You need to find *departments* which specialize in the research you want, not *individuals*. You will not finish if you tie your hopes onto one professor only to find out he's an asshole or incompetent.
As a (non-amateur) physicist and former fusion researcher, I recommend putting in a deposit at a sperm bank for any man intending to do this.
Contrary to popular belief, fusion does cause significant radiation.
That said, this is pretty cool. It's too bad people like this don't go all the way and do physics professionally. Perhaps if advanced physics research paid as well as working for Gucci...
If the biggest complaint to come out of the first world cup in Africa are the cheap noisemakers, I'd call that a win. Sure, your typical South African may be upset that people are complaining about the horns, but the organizing committee has to be thrilled that people are not complaining about violence, a lack of organization, or any of the other things people were worried about when South Africa was announced as the host.
This is good, solid condensed matter physics research, and it is important. But, the 66% efficiency they're quoting comes from an old calculation of what is effectively a perfect solar thermal converter where the electrons are "hot" and the temperature of the crystal doesn't really matter because there's no interaction between the electrons (or photons) and the crystal. This theory has been the motivation for the hot electron transfer work on quantum dots, but at some point it should come up that they can't get hot electron transfer to work at much above around 100 K. That's kind-of really important (not to mention impractical). The device they're *trying* to make shouldn't need to be cooled at all. That's a giant clue that the theory they're basing this amazing 66% on is more than a little oversimplified for what they actually have. It's annoying that people are using an out of date 28 year old paper to sell the direction of their research; it makes life hard on their competition using more honest efficiencies.
I sat on a libraries committee at a UC a few years ago while this "deal" with Nature was being negotiated.
This idea that the UC is getting a discount is absolute BS. We paid (and are paying) extra so that UC libraries are allowed to locally store electronic copies of the online articles, something which Nature is now required to allow us to do (for free) for NIH sponsored research. Go ahead and go to the Nature website and look at the institution subscription price. I just checked again and Nature is right now $3095 for an institution subscription. That's $1370 *less* than the negotiated UC rate. That 90% discount comment is absolutely fabricated, UC pays above market. To suggest charging UC ~$17000 per journal is insulting.
You know, I don't really remember the exact numbers we were talking about at lunch. I'm sorry if I got some of the numbers wrong, particularly if they ended up being far to small, that would annoy me.
I just remember being very impressed at the insane amount of total data coming in. I'm definitely more used to the setup of a single GHz ADC, switching between a handful of channels.
There's a big difference in scale between a condensed matter experiment, where I get to do absolutely everything myself, and something like ATLAS. I'm amazed that these various groups (hardware, software, design, construction, cryogenics, analysis... all on each detector) are able to work together so well.
I was having lunch with some CERN guys a couple weeks ago, and was asking them about the speed of their analogue to digital converters. I don't remember what the number was, but it seemed low to me, something like 200kHz. So, of course, I had to point out that *my* cheapo converters ran faster than theirs by more than an order of magnitude. They responded with "well, each of our converters does 200kHz on all of our 4000 channels at the same time, so we're really recording at..."
Who else would think to make a team of superhero basketball player/physicists modeled on the Harlem Globetrotters? That's genius and a very different representation of scientists than we're used to seeing.
People drop out of grad school all the time. It's almost never that they can't do the material or don't "have what it takes." It's simply that for every student who gets a great project and avoids outside emergencies, there's another student who ends up at a dead end (I think the statistics are ~40% graduation rate). These things happen, but it means that smart people get to do something else with their physics background.
This is ok. We don't actually want as many PhD physicists as we have now. There are enough of us that we end up in banking, computer science, and chemistry; there are even some PhD physicist car salesmen (who have also been profiled in APS news). Cohen is a smashing success for someone who was unlucky enough to be handed a doomed-to-fail research project.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that we can measure the acceleration of the earth (rotation around the sun is obviously not a strait line, and easily measurable). So... yeah, you don't actually get the same results when you do the math for a point decoupled to the solar system and earth. No one outside of physics learns relativity, despite it being 100 year old science. Some may learn "pigeon" relativity, but that's not really helpful.
"Nanostructured?"
Sorry, that's also BS. Spinning on a sol-gel solution is neither expensive nor "nanostructuring," and that can get you an excellent coating. You can also paint on an effective coating. If you've ever seen a self-cleaning window, and you have if you've used a car, you've seen a very cheap and effective photoactive TiO2 layer in action.
The TiO2 in photochemical cells is never the expensive part. Platinum, ITO and the dye are all more expensive. These photoactive coatings are so cheap to produce they coat entire buildings with it in japan. It's a "pre-nanostructured" material. I realize there's a lot of research on nano-TiO2, but that's because people are still trying to figure out how it works, not because you need to use nano-scale material.
Why would you say this? Maybe you meant indium tin oxide, which is expensive... but no, you use that one, but don't mention that in the press release.
It's not likely that someone working with this protein, who has to purchase or make it for several thousand dollars per milligram makes this claim innocently (titanium dioxide is a few cents per gram, and GFP is already one of the most mass produced purified proteins out there, it's not going to get much cheaper anytime soon). Misleading blurbs like this are terrible for science; they propagate falsehoods and direct research funding away from promising sources.
Because a government is supported by taxes, backed by a military, not accountable to share holders and has several other special privileges.
Is this really confusing? A government is not the same as a private individual. This case perfectly demonstrates that. Why does the government have this helium? Did they pay for it, or just claim it? Did they pay for the storage space, or just claim it? Do they pay taxes on its sale? These are not hard things to think of.
I think you're confused. The price was set in the "Helium Privitization Act of 1996," that's simply a fact and has nothing to do with market forces.
When the government makes a law which says "we will sell our helium for $1.50 per cubic meter until it is gone" and that supply is 1/3 the global total market for two decades, the "market" has not set the price.
This is not about balloon animals, and it's not your typical media scare story.
I'm a condensed matter physicist. It's very common in my field to use helium to examine the properties of materials at very low temperatures. This is how things like superconductors and quantum computing are often worked on in their early stages. Using helium is important, and because universities don't like concentrated hydrogen (for safety reasons), pretty much required.
The current supply of helium is uncertain. Many research institutes (like the university I work at) have rationed helium. That is, we're allowed to buy a certain amount, and can't get more than that. This is set by the suppliers, who get their helium from the US government. The result is that my experiments compete with the experiments in particle physics, the medical school and other groups for helium. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I can't. From a practical viewpoint, we're not running out of helium in 2015, we're running out now.
There is helium available somewhere else, but there's no economic incentive for anyone to capture it and sell it. As long as stockpiles are sold off at fixed, below-market prices (TFA says helium should be 20 to 50 times more expensive), no one can economically afford to capture and purify the helium which is available. We're wasting the tail end of potential helium production (most in the stockpiles came from oil processing). Think of it this way: when oil runs out, helium runs out. We can replace oil much more cheaply than we can replace helium. Helium is too light an element to be captured by Earth's gravitational field this close to the sun, so that wasted helium is gone.
That's the strange part. It's pretty much an average microscope. It really doesn't make any sense why they're mentioning that. Expensive is more than $1 million. Cheap is less than $100 k.
As someone working on alternate (non-imaging) technologies, this is more than a bit annoying. Why did we chose this system? It's horribly slow, labor intensive, invasive and only helps against idiots who try to carry dense weapons on their person. The "wake-up call" terrorist who made it through metal detector security with a bomb strapped to his leg would also make it through these machines. Way to go.
There is no shortage of scientists and engineers willing to work for NASA. What they need is more political power. Perhaps a game where you build relationships with politicians, staffers and contractors, convincing them over several years that exploration is a worthy cause. I think they'll find enough welders.
I've spent the last 8 years training to become a professor. (Yeah, undergrad doesn't count.)
The "teaching" part of that training consisted of one class on teaching, and nine months of part-time teaching experience, which mainly consisted of grading. That was 7 years ago.
The "research" part of that training consisted of ~12 classes, and 7 years of full time research work. My faculty applications will be judged almost exclusively on my research experience and ideas. My professional advancement as a professor will also depend almost exclusively on my research.
There are exceptions to this, I'm generalizing.
Of course, if we really want to train people as well as we can, the apprenticeship model used in research labs works quite well (and fits well with the realities of the current research funding model). It's hands-on, small group, with personalized lectures and lots of opportunity for interaction and collaboration.
Is this a joke? Did someone put this paper up to smear someone's reputation? There isn't anything close to good data or analysis there. You can't put that out there.
Slashdot shouldn't be looking at this, it's embarrassing.
Just go get a Master's.
Why are you asking us anyway? You're at a national lab. Throw a rock. Whoever it hits, ask them how you can get into a position where you have a more active role in research. They'll have a much better, tailored, specific answer for you.
If these guys were serious about powering implants, they'd be using ATP or glucose. Heat and vibrations are nice, but a few more steps down the thermodynamic pipeline.
Plus, the good piezoelectrics are not exactly made of bio-friendly metals.
Let's just not pay attention to things like the difference between precision and accuracy anymore, it's too much work.
I mean, there's no way that the same physical limitations would apply to all quartz clocks, right?
Yeah, this whole thing was pretty useless except as advertisement for Google.
If the guys starting Google had relied on one of these grants, would they have received any money in time to make use of it?
There are plenty of companies, agencies and non-profits out there who manage to give out similar grants yearly. This isn't *that* hard to do.
As an academic researcher, my interests vary depending on the latest developments in the field. It would be not wise for me to publicize these interests in a centralized list or even on my own webpage, as my competition would be more than happy to get some extra insight into what I'm trying and scoop me.
Thus, this problem is worse than you think. You can't even trust a professor's university webpage to give you an honest account of what they're currently working on. Perhaps clinical psychology is different, there's no competition and everyone is happy to give public monthly updates. I doubt it.
So, what to do? Some people here say read papers. If you can follow them, that's fine. Better to simply call or e-mail clinical psychologists and explain what kind of research you're looking for. You need to find *departments* which specialize in the research you want, not *individuals*. You will not finish if you tie your hopes onto one professor only to find out he's an asshole or incompetent.
generational change is a bit hard, yes?
I say go for it.
As a (non-amateur) physicist and former fusion researcher, I recommend putting in a deposit at a sperm bank for any man intending to do this.
Contrary to popular belief, fusion does cause significant radiation.
That said, this is pretty cool. It's too bad people like this don't go all the way and do physics professionally. Perhaps if advanced physics research paid as well as working for Gucci...
If the biggest complaint to come out of the first world cup in Africa are the cheap noisemakers, I'd call that a win. Sure, your typical South African may be upset that people are complaining about the horns, but the organizing committee has to be thrilled that people are not complaining about violence, a lack of organization, or any of the other things people were worried about when South Africa was announced as the host.
This is good, solid condensed matter physics research, and it is important. But, the 66% efficiency they're quoting comes from an old calculation of what is effectively a perfect solar thermal converter where the electrons are "hot" and the temperature of the crystal doesn't really matter because there's no interaction between the electrons (or photons) and the crystal. This theory has been the motivation for the hot electron transfer work on quantum dots, but at some point it should come up that they can't get hot electron transfer to work at much above around 100 K. That's kind-of really important (not to mention impractical). The device they're *trying* to make shouldn't need to be cooled at all. That's a giant clue that the theory they're basing this amazing 66% on is more than a little oversimplified for what they actually have. It's annoying that people are using an out of date 28 year old paper to sell the direction of their research; it makes life hard on their competition using more honest efficiencies.
I sat on a libraries committee at a UC a few years ago while this "deal" with Nature was being negotiated.
This idea that the UC is getting a discount is absolute BS. We paid (and are paying) extra so that UC libraries are allowed to locally store electronic copies of the online articles, something which Nature is now required to allow us to do (for free) for NIH sponsored research. Go ahead and go to the Nature website and look at the institution subscription price. I just checked again and Nature is right now $3095 for an institution subscription. That's $1370 *less* than the negotiated UC rate. That 90% discount comment is absolutely fabricated, UC pays above market. To suggest charging UC ~$17000 per journal is insulting.
You know, I don't really remember the exact numbers we were talking about at lunch. I'm sorry if I got some of the numbers wrong, particularly if they ended up being far to small, that would annoy me.
I just remember being very impressed at the insane amount of total data coming in. I'm definitely more used to the setup of a single GHz ADC, switching between a handful of channels.
There's a big difference in scale between a condensed matter experiment, where I get to do absolutely everything myself, and something like ATLAS. I'm amazed that these various groups (hardware, software, design, construction, cryogenics, analysis... all on each detector) are able to work together so well.
I was having lunch with some CERN guys a couple weeks ago, and was asking them about the speed of their analogue to digital converters. I don't remember what the number was, but it seemed low to me, something like 200kHz. So, of course, I had to point out that *my* cheapo converters ran faster than theirs by more than an order of magnitude. They responded with "well, each of our converters does 200kHz on all of our 4000 channels at the same time, so we're really recording at..."
They won.
Who else would think to make a team of superhero basketball player/physicists modeled on the Harlem Globetrotters? That's genius and a very different representation of scientists than we're used to seeing.
People drop out of grad school all the time. It's almost never that they can't do the material or don't "have what it takes." It's simply that for every student who gets a great project and avoids outside emergencies, there's another student who ends up at a dead end (I think the statistics are ~40% graduation rate). These things happen, but it means that smart people get to do something else with their physics background.
This is ok. We don't actually want as many PhD physicists as we have now. There are enough of us that we end up in banking, computer science, and chemistry; there are even some PhD physicist car salesmen (who have also been profiled in APS news). Cohen is a smashing success for someone who was unlucky enough to be handed a doomed-to-fail research project.