In other news IBM and AMD have hired linguists to invent new words for this process. "silicide, damascene copper contacts, and advanced activation techniques." seemed far to cool to saddle with the brand- name of the new "Blubberon(TM)" and "Humpderon(TM) processor line.
You need to think before mouthing off in ignorance.
Silicides are silicon based compounds, eg Copper Silicide, Cu_5 S. The high purity of the Si used by IBM etc means that the formation of Silicides in their samples is unlikely to come from impurities in the wafers (Fe, Co, Ni and other transition metals are generally the worst offenders). So they are most likely to form at Si-stack interfaces after annealing (essentially baking) their samples (chips).
Damascene copper is contacts are small interconnects made in multi-step stages.
1.There's a lithography step (patterning & chemical wet-etch) to make trenches for the copper connects.
2.Followed by either electrochemical deposition, or sputtering of the copper.
3.Finally after an etch/polishing step you have your connects.
"advanced activation techniques" refers to modifying the surface of the silicon wafer, and/or deposited layers on the silicon to increase deposition rate, and current efficiency. In the case of electrodeposition, you need to aim for a current efficiency of more than 10% (as in, for a given applied potential, measured current/charge, how much metal has been deposited compared to what you would expect). An electrochemist working in industry would be able to give a much more accurate value than this.
It's all a lot more complicated than this, and optimising each step is a painstaking process, and yes IAAPBOWIMSNSP (I am a physicist, but one working in magnetic systems not semiconductor physics), but that is the general gist of it.
Ferrofluids are generally dispersed in water. They consist of coated magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles. It doesn't take a particularly strong magnetic field to distort them. If you place a small, good quality permanent magnet (NdFeB), which has a surface field ~ 150 mT, under a dish of a ferrofluid, the ferrofluid grows peaks (it look slike a hedgehog) to minimise its surface area.
With small electromagnets, it is possible to generate fields of this magnitude, on this scale. The magnetic field inside a solenoid is
B = mu_0 * (N/L) * I
where mu_0 permeability 4*PI e-7
N - Number of turns
L - Length of solenoid
I - Current in solenoid
Typical Values of N = 5000, L = 1 cm, I = 0.5 A, B = 314 mT at the center (so ~ 150 - 200 mT at the edge).
The price these companies charge is horrendous, in our dept. I think it costs ~â7,000 p.a. and thats without support or the right to have upgrades ('maintenance').
Use Scilab or Octave (both open source). They might not have all the fancy libraries that Matlab has (especially the image processing/wavelet stuff) but for most of the simulation work/number crunching I do Scilab is sufficient. They don't have the same polished interface, but Scilab doesn't hog as much resources. Another benefit is that it works on nix & win.
I remember having to do last minute calculations on a friend/colleagues Macbook the night before giving a talk at a conference. If it wasn't for my familiarity with Scilab, and not being stuck with something like Matlab or Mathematica I would have been severely screwed!
In my undergrad years I had to learn mathematica, which was pretty pointless since I could only use it in college.
Slightly more on-topic, for anyone doing research in physics having even a basic knowledge of programming can save you hours. For simple things like data analysis a few lines of code in your language of choice can save hours of plotting graphs, number crunching and other crap I sometimes have to do.
In an experimental lab the most useful languages to know are c, fortran (I hate fortran, I think it's ugly and clunky, but that's an aside), maybe python or scilab for something quick, labview for interfacing equipment with pcs, qb/vb for quick & dirty rs232 interfaces.
As plenty of other people have pointed out at this point, there are so many libraries out there for c/fortran/python that with a little exposure to basic numerical methods students can go on to use libraries like gsl after understanding how they work. At least that way they have some idea what the limitations to each approach is (eg. different methods to find extrema if they are so inclined), and what the errors are/can be.
One thing I see time and time again is nonlinear fitting data that has a simple trend, eg. a log dependence (All you need to do is get the log of the data, and do a linear fit, far more reliable). Students should realise how robust/reliable particular algorithms are, and I fear in something like excel they won't encounter this. Excel has its uses but it's riddled with errors. There are problems with some of its statistical functions that even OO has fixed in its spreadsheet app.
Hopefully the submitters students get a fruitful experience of programming, and make sure it's not a proprietry langauage your students need to be able to work on it on their own computers as well as being able to use it where ever they end up.
To be honest I didn't really pass too much attention to the sex content of his books, the burning orgy one was a bit strange, but then again there have been stranger religious practices.
To me they only seemed part of the narrative to further the development of the characters and their roles/positions in the world. You have to remember that in his semi historical novels, and in the eras he deals with, attitudes to sex, such as the hope of becoming fully celibate, with sexual urges being a sin was not commonplace, but it did exist. The King Louis scene was a purely functional scene which I thought conveyed the political games of Versailles quite well, the idea of never showing your enemies/potential rivals any weakness. While there might have been other ways to hide the kings screams, that method is certainly a very clever one, and better than the king disappearing mysteriously for a few hours.
The only real exception is the orgy. I have always felt The Diamond Age was one of his stranger, and more difficult to read books. So for me the sex scene mentioned above was just part of the deliberate strangeness of the story.
I always enjoy what the different attitudes of people bring out in their interpretation of books. I hope his next one will keep me as engrossed as his Baroque Cycle.
You can get liquid nitrogen cooled superconducting magnets now, I'm not sure if too many people use them (Quantum Design still seems to use He cooled superc's http://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html )
The record is 138 K for High Tc superc's, and N is liquid at 77 K, I'm guessing the high Tc materials are difficult and/or expensive to fabricate.
I don't know about any other companies but Lufthansa started offering in-flight net access in Sept 2004 (I was heading to Japan via Munich). It didn't seem too expensive, and they had some freebie minutes since it was only just being introduced.
The only problem was I had a massive P4 powered laptop with a 17'' screen and no wireless card, so I got to look at people with their fancy vaios checking their email. gggrrrr......
Millikan suspended charged droplets of oil between too plates.
When he got the electric field at the correct value the gravitational force (F = m*g) was canceled by the force due to the electric field (f = q*E)
What he actually measured was the charge on each droplet, and found that the lowest common factor was -1.67 e-19 (i.e 19 zeroes infront of 1.67, 0.00....0167)
How he did this was he dropped the oil drops from above, measured their terminal velocity, and from this, their mass. To charge the oil drops he illuminated the chamber with x-rays, ionising both the air, and the oil drops.
He then applied a voltage across the two plates (one above the oil drops, the other below).
So at all times, he was measuring the charge from a large number of electrons. It's not commonly known, but Millikan knew what he was looking for in his dataset, and from what I've heard the quality of his data was poor, and ignored a lot of fractional datapoints (I can't prove this, it's only geek gossip I heard).
Hope this answers your question.
To detect single electron currents, you need to use modern technology (google d.c. squids, or even SQUID detector). For a long time Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices were the only detectors that could detect individual quanta (magnetic fluxons). Sorry I'm not going into the details of this, but I gotta pee:P
Because you can study the physics of smaller and smaller systems. There are only a few areas that this device will be useful, but researchers are always fighting against noise while trying to increase the sensitivity of their devices.
Up until now the record for smallest current was about 100 attoamps with a dc squid. The great thing about them is that you can detect currents from 100 attoamps (if you're very, very careful) all the way up to milliamps, all in the same device in the same setup.
This new device with coupled quantum dots will only work on the attoamp scale, so is not as versatile, but the years of work that went into designing, fabricating, and measuring this device is astounding.
Think about it, they are measuring individual electrons, they are fighting against a huge number of electrons surrounding their devices, which experience random thermal noise. The thermal noise in the shielding around their device can generate eddy currents of the order of what they are detecting so they had to account for that too, and design special shielding.
Not only that, they have to think about the coupling of the quantum dots. You only want charge transfer from resonant tunneling, if the dots are too strongly coupled to their surroundings the quantum coherence is swamped, the linewidths of the levels being populated would be broadened too much. And if they are not coupled strong enough, you won't get enough resonant tunneling.
Of course there are a lot more considerations, going from concept, design parameters, actual method of fabrication and preparation, detection methods, and noise and data analysis.
All in all it's a great technical achievement to do what they've done.
A few years ago when I went out a second story window in my sleep, one of the many injuries I sustained was a broken left wrist. It meant I wasn't really able to leave the house for a while, so I spent the rest of the summer inside playing Deus Ex with the keyboard propped up vertically (I couldn't turn my wrist because of the pain/plaster cast)
Of course, I don't use online banking, but for someone who does, I can't see how you could keep that from happening without being extremly careful.
Just bookmark the main login page, no typo worries then......
Yeah, there was no need for the grandparents trolling of you.
There is a lot of merit in what you say, it was just your previous post was badly worded and implied a forceful influence of other people & cultures, effectively making them american
Learning about other cultures is very important, but there is a huge difference between learning about them, and having it forced upon you, and supplanting your own.
It's too late at night for me to write a better response (what with my finals starting on monday)
In regards to fostering positive relations with countries like China and regions like the Middle East, the issue here is fundamentalism, be it culture or religion. These are forces that will bend slowly at best, if at all. So the idea of genuine open positive relations with these regions is unlikely, in my estimation. The only way to foster change, in my estimation, is to actively promote american media in those regions (let MTV re-educate Afghani youth) and ride those guys into office, at which time we can deal with them. Can't deal with the hard line guys in office now.
This is one of the many reasons for anti-american sentiments. The arrogant forcing of american culture and values on systems and people that intially wanted nothing to do with you (and the "re-education" of Afghans is about as enlightened as the re-education of dissidents in North Korea, and we all know how much you love their system) only turns them against you.
And of all groups to do it, the American media! The dumbing down of America (and corruption of your "traditional" value system) by the media is already fo concern amongst some americans. Sending those guys with their own agendas to re-educate people is insane (letting Fox News loose on the Afghans, scary thought).
I've nothing against americans, just don't force your culture on others.
Because global warming will shut down the circulating currents in the Atlantic. With no warm water circulating up from the equator Western Europe, and Eastern America will freeze (temperatures will drop by ~ 10-15 degrees in some cases).
As it stands, even if the path of the gulf stream is diverted further from e.g. Ireland (it's already moved by about 50 miles in the last decade), average temperatures in Ireland will drop, making the climate very similar to what Northern Scotland's is today.
I'm going to be captain obvious here (so spank me), but generalisations are pointless (as is this one).
Maybe they're not "me-centric" and just not interested in the US? (damn, another potential generalisation) It's a pretty big world out there, and for some people there are more interesting places than the states. I don't know what part of Eastern Europe you were in, but you can't equate what small percentage of the total population you met there with all of Europe, with it's myriad cultures and opinions. Exact same way I wouldn't equate someone from Buffalo with someone from Denver.
A country's media is a good test to see how "me-centric" a country is.
Here in Ireland, in quality newspapers, (I'm not sure about tabloids, I don't read them) and on the news shows, a large proportion of it is devoted to world news. Then again we're a feckin small country.
It is the same over in Britain, BBC news is probably one of the best for unbiased (or as close as you can get) news coverage worldwide, and their quality broadsheets also have good world coverage.
It's the same for the rest of Western Europe (& I'll admit I know nothing about the media in Eastern Europe). BR
However, the same cannot be said of the media in the states. The major networks devote a pitiful amount of time/column space to news from outside the states.
at least with it being commisioned by Warner Bros there's a chance it might actually be made. It took poor Douglas Adams 20 odd years, and I don't know how many script rewrites to get to a point where they actually made it (and only once he popped the can).
Two words for you:
Rory
Gallagher
A master of blues, rock, & folk, his guitar playing skills were astounding, check out live versions of Tattoo'd Lady, Cradle Rock, As The Crow Flies, (Can be found on Irish Tour), Moonchild, Bad Penny (on Stagestruck), and I have a scarily good bootleg of Tatoo'd Lady.
Other Irish guitar legends include Gary Moore, The Edge (technically better guitarists out there, but a legend in his own right), Phil Lynnot (Bass Guitar, but you never specified what type), Johnny Fean from The Horslips (but I doubt anyone outside Ireland knows/knew about them), Christy Moore -> a giant of the folk scene for about 30/40 years now, he is an impeccable showman with a powerful presence.
Plenty more, but since they most likely won't be known outside Ireland, no point mentioning them.
As an aside Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix's Drummer) was Irish (Irish parents, but born in Middlesex, England), and of course those Gallagher brothers are 2nd generation Irish from England aswell.
I was lucky to be on a flight from Frankfurt to Narita (Tokyo) back in Sept when they first introduced it. The normal price was something like 15 for 30 mins, I can't remember. Either way they gave me a coupon so I gotta use it for free for 30mins.
Pretty sweet being able to email your mates from thousands of metres above Siberia:P
You needed a wireless network card though, so it would have annoyed the hell out of me if I didn't have one.
The speed was great enough for someone used to being on a dial-up (the wonders of modern Ireland -> the story on the digitisation of the projectors in Irish cinemas is hilarious)
Thank you for your measured response! I know it would have been easy to attack my previous posts.
And yes you are completely right on many points. After I posted that second comment I realised I missed my own point, about being impartial.
The greatest conflict for me is between the scientific method (which has had a profound effect on my way of thinking), and my first hand experiences of myself, and other people I know. Those experiences I had upset that paradigm I am still (I hope) in, especially compared with the professional, scientific experiments carried out indicating the homeopathy has no effect.
From my own experiences, conventional medicine had no effect (and they will admit themselves that there is no know cure, yet, for ME), but I would never advocate homeopathy as a standalone treatment. The homeopaths I know, all advise their patients to stay with whatever treatments their GPs have them on, and keep them informed about the homeopathy.
At the end of the day, I want to believe in homeopathy, while wanting to analyse it properly and go "Hey, what about all this evidence!". Which are fundementally opposed to each other. I don't know if there is a way to "prove" homeopathy, all the evidence suggests otherwise. Then again that could be due to fundamental flaws in the approach to the experiments, (like the studies of brownian motion before Einstein's treatement of it in his 1905 paper, the researchers were getting nonsensical results for the velocities of the particles, which would increase as you measured at smaller and smaller scales!) but that is unlikely. I once read a book trying to explain the physics behind it, it was hilarious. The author brought in ideas from QED, and string theory (primarily the energy from the molecules in solution being transferred and stored in higher dimensional elements of the water molecules!), it had no founding in reality (I suppose you could argue the same with string theory, m-theory and the like).
Indeed you are quite right about the origins and practise of homeopathy. I only know a certain amount about it (I wanted know more about what I was putting into my body, and where the techniques came from), but its methodology is something that any chemist/pharmacist would hate.
I wouldn't brand Chinese medicine with the same stick though. They had a fully developed system thousands of years before western medicine, and it was only codified after a long history of medicine before that.
(As an aside, I have heard -so it's only word of mouth- from chinese friends that one of the biggest problems with chinese medicine, in China anyway, is that in the past they kept the best remedies and knowledge within their families)
And it's a system that works, in principle yes medicine should take whatever works, and works safely to help improve/save peoples lives, but it's not always the case. There is still a lot of arrogance in the west about chinese medicine, and herbalists. The old remedies your granny might suggest most likely have been refuted, or more effective solutions discovered (there are the nuggets of gold though), but herbalism (at least those that are licenced, and have had training up to the required standard for their governing bodies) is not as voodoo-hoodoo as it normally thought.
Damn, I will have to stop there, I've a date in an hour:P which I need to get ready for.
(PS I'm trying to find an article that was in an Irish Pharmaceutical magazine about research indicating that active molecules could be more effective if left bonded to larger molecules, as found in plant and herb remedies, as opposed to the isolated molecules in equivalent conventional medicines. Of course I haven't supplied any evidence to prove this article exists yet, so it can't be treated as being true - yet, hopefully!)
I felt I had to reply to this directly after reading it (I just posted a message on homeopathy just now)
I normally don't take things on a faith basis, but after my experience with homeopathy I will admit I'm a believer.
After years of suffering from ME, and going nowhere with treatments (no quacks, I wouldn't waste my money, time, or ruin my hopes yet again) I've seen a massive turnaround over the last 9 months I've been on a homeopathic treatement programme. Yes there could have been other factors involved that I am unaware of. That they were coincidental with my treatement makes them unlikely but still possible. I don't know how I'm better, I just know that after following my homeopath's programme I am healthy again.
I don't like not knowing, but I attribute it to homeopathy.
You are bang on the mark with the bias in the experiments, and with other "believers". I don't think practictioners will ever admit to it not working, but beyond the research done so far, I don't know what else can be done in a scientific way to prove that it doesn't work.
To be honest I used to be very sceptical about homeopathy myself. I've suffered from ME for many years now, with nothing helping me (I won't bore you with the details you already know, here's a link to an excellent account of someone else with ME). I tried everything to bring me out of it, traditional medicine, health programmes, queried mental health issues (was I depressed because I was so sick, or was I sick because I was so depressed? I didn't think so, but how could I know), Chineese medicine (worked partially for a while, but I collapsed again), and finally homeopathy.
I'm a hard nosed physicist so I was very skeptical about the whole process, and theory behind it. I can't (or won't) speak for anyone else, but for me homeopathy worked. It was slow process, and a lot of hard work, 5 months with one homeopath making very progress, but after about 9 months with another one, I have never been this physically good.
I wasted so much time being trapped in bed, or forcing myself to do things and suffer the consequences for weeks after. Now I swim every day for an hour, cycle 10km (over xmas I had more time so I did 22km every day for about 6weeks, except for 25th dec:P) and living & enjoying my life the way I should be.
While homeopathy has brought me this far, I have to maintain it more carefully than a normal person, if I slide even a little, I'll drop right back down.
I don't know how homeopathy works, how it really works. They say things like energy from the molecules you are diluting leave an imprint on the energy of the tincture, or that diluting down to infinestimal quantities makes the solutions more powerful. But sure as most of ye know people are trying to get rid of the infinites in our theories of nature, that they are not a true part of nature, and you can't dilute something to infinity.
More proper, impartial studies need to be done to investigate the phenomenon, not try to prove/disprove it. When politics or agendas get involved in science, it can (only saying can) result in loaded results, and hence bad science.
Since there is no theory than can explain it (just like the fact that BCS theory can't explain high temperature superconductors, or new interesting research showing our entire outlook on magnetism, the M-J paradigm, might be wrong) any theories on how it works are derived from interpretations of the experimental results, and hence the experiment, or the interpretations need to be unbiased.
Almost all the posts so far have been business or industry related (with some interesting exceptions). Yet there are so many other opportunities out there, even for someone with "just" a cs degree, or with a combination of qualifications.
For example, if you were interested in the sciences (and even if you pick only one of them, eg physics) there are a huge number of different areas involving both fundamental and applied research using computational modelling. A pairing with any science degree can lead directly into the academic world (just like a cs degree), where in my opinion, the pay might not be as good as industry, but the social life, lower stress, and longer/more flexible time off leads to a better quality of life (along with ample opportunity to travel, especially if you use postdoc as a means for getting 2/3 year contracts in universities all round the world), and there is also plenty of room for working your way up (and it's not qualification based after your PhD, only results and a little political based).
Back on the money making business though:P......
If you're only two years out from your primary degree, you don't want to be getting an MBA so early, it should be primarily for people in their mid 30's already on the managerial ladder. For anyone in their 20's it doesn't look good, because for many of the jobs they might apply for they would be over qualified in the eyes of the interviewer. They would be people expecting/demanding a higer pay, and would be likely to move on quickly to better things. As a consequence of this, for people who then reach their 30's without significant inroads to the admin/managerial side of things, it looks bad on their CV to have an MBA since their 20's and not make the progress that might be expected of MBA graduates.
I apologise for the wishy-washy-ness of the "maybe"s and "would"s etc etc, it just can't be helped by me:P
Slashdot Mirror
In other news IBM and AMD have hired linguists to invent new words for this process. "silicide, damascene copper contacts, and advanced activation techniques." seemed far to cool to saddle with the brand- name of the new "Blubberon(TM)" and "Humpderon(TM) processor line.
You need to think before mouthing off in ignorance.
Silicides are silicon based compounds, eg Copper Silicide, Cu_5 S. The high purity of the Si used by IBM etc means that the formation of Silicides in their samples is unlikely to come from impurities in the wafers (Fe, Co, Ni and other transition metals are generally the worst offenders). So they are most likely to form at Si-stack interfaces after annealing (essentially baking) their samples (chips).
Damascene copper is contacts are small interconnects made in multi-step stages.
1.There's a lithography step (patterning & chemical wet-etch) to make trenches for the copper connects.
2.Followed by either electrochemical deposition, or sputtering of the copper.
3.Finally after an etch/polishing step you have your connects.
"advanced activation techniques" refers to modifying the surface of the silicon wafer, and/or deposited layers on the silicon to increase deposition rate, and current efficiency. In the case of electrodeposition, you need to aim for a current efficiency of more than 10% (as in, for a given applied potential, measured current/charge, how much metal has been deposited compared to what you would expect). An electrochemist working in industry would be able to give a much more accurate value than this.
It's all a lot more complicated than this, and optimising each step is a painstaking process, and yes IAAPBOWIMSNSP (I am a physicist, but one working in magnetic systems not semiconductor physics), but that is the general gist of it.
The other 98% comes from here
Ferrofluids are generally dispersed in water. They consist of coated magnetite (Fe3O4) nanoparticles. It doesn't take a particularly strong magnetic field to distort them. If you place a small, good quality permanent magnet (NdFeB), which has a surface field ~ 150 mT, under a dish of a ferrofluid, the ferrofluid grows peaks (it look slike a hedgehog) to minimise its surface area.
With small electromagnets, it is possible to generate fields of this magnitude, on this scale. The magnetic field inside a solenoid is
B = mu_0 * (N/L) * I
where mu_0 permeability 4*PI e-7
N - Number of turns
L - Length of solenoid
I - Current in solenoid
Typical Values of N = 5000, L = 1 cm, I = 0.5 A, B = 314 mT at the center (so ~ 150 - 200 mT at the edge).
The price these companies charge is horrendous, in our dept. I think it costs ~â7,000 p.a. and thats without support or the right to have upgrades ('maintenance').
Use Scilab or Octave (both open source). They might not have all the fancy libraries that Matlab has (especially the image processing/wavelet stuff) but for most of the simulation work/number crunching I do Scilab is sufficient. They don't have the same polished interface, but Scilab doesn't hog as much resources. Another benefit is that it works on nix & win.
I remember having to do last minute calculations on a friend/colleagues Macbook the night before giving a talk at a conference. If it wasn't for my familiarity with Scilab, and not being stuck with something like Matlab or Mathematica I would have been severely screwed!
In my undergrad years I had to learn mathematica, which was pretty pointless since I could only use it in college.
Slightly more on-topic, for anyone doing research in physics having even a basic knowledge of programming can save you hours. For simple things like data analysis a few lines of code in your language of choice can save hours of plotting graphs, number crunching and other crap I sometimes have to do.
In an experimental lab the most useful languages to know are c, fortran (I hate fortran, I think it's ugly and clunky, but that's an aside), maybe python or scilab for something quick, labview for interfacing equipment with pcs, qb/vb for quick & dirty rs232 interfaces.
As plenty of other people have pointed out at this point, there are so many libraries out there for c/fortran/python that with a little exposure to basic numerical methods students can go on to use libraries like gsl after understanding how they work. At least that way they have some idea what the limitations to each approach is (eg. different methods to find extrema if they are so inclined), and what the errors are/can be.
One thing I see time and time again is nonlinear fitting data that has a simple trend, eg. a log dependence (All you need to do is get the log of the data, and do a linear fit, far more reliable). Students should realise how robust/reliable particular algorithms are, and I fear in something like excel they won't encounter this. Excel has its uses but it's riddled with errors. There are problems with some of its statistical functions that even OO has fixed in its spreadsheet app.
Hopefully the submitters students get a fruitful experience of programming, and make sure it's not a proprietry langauage your students need to be able to work on it on their own computers as well as being able to use it where ever they end up.
To be honest I didn't really pass too much attention to the sex content of his books, the burning orgy one was a bit strange, but then again there have been stranger religious practices.
To me they only seemed part of the narrative to further the development of the characters and their roles/positions in the world. You have to remember that in his semi historical novels, and in the eras he deals with, attitudes to sex, such as the hope of becoming fully celibate, with sexual urges being a sin was not commonplace, but it did exist. The King Louis scene was a purely functional scene which I thought conveyed the political games of Versailles quite well, the idea of never showing your enemies/potential rivals any weakness. While there might have been other ways to hide the kings screams, that method is certainly a very clever one, and better than the king disappearing mysteriously for a few hours.
The only real exception is the orgy. I have always felt The Diamond Age was one of his stranger, and more difficult to read books. So for me the sex scene mentioned above was just part of the deliberate strangeness of the story.
I always enjoy what the different attitudes of people bring out in their interpretation of books. I hope his next one will keep me as engrossed as his Baroque Cycle.
You can get liquid nitrogen cooled superconducting magnets now, I'm not sure if too many people use them (Quantum Design still seems to use He cooled superc's http://www.qdusa.com/products/ppms.html )
The record is 138 K for High Tc superc's, and N is liquid at 77 K, I'm guessing the high Tc materials are difficult and/or expensive to fabricate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-temperature_superconductor
I don't know about any other companies but Lufthansa started offering in-flight net access in Sept 2004 (I was heading to Japan via Munich). It didn't seem too expensive, and they had some freebie minutes since it was only just being introduced.
The only problem was I had a massive P4 powered laptop with a 17'' screen and no wireless card, so I got to look at people with their fancy vaios checking their email. gggrrrr......
that sounds pretty accurate.
cool
Millikan suspended charged droplets of oil between too plates.
:P
When he got the electric field at the correct value the gravitational force (F = m*g) was canceled by the force due to the electric field (f = q*E)
What he actually measured was the charge on each droplet, and found that the lowest common factor was -1.67 e-19 (i.e 19 zeroes infront of 1.67, 0.00....0167)
How he did this was he dropped the oil drops from above, measured their terminal velocity, and from this, their mass. To charge the oil drops he illuminated the chamber with x-rays, ionising both the air, and the oil drops.
He then applied a voltage across the two plates (one above the oil drops, the other below).
So at all times, he was measuring the charge from a large number of electrons. It's not commonly known, but Millikan knew what he was looking for in his dataset, and from what I've heard the quality of his data was poor, and ignored a lot of fractional datapoints (I can't prove this, it's only geek gossip I heard).
Hope this answers your question.
To detect single electron currents, you need to use modern technology (google d.c. squids, or even SQUID detector). For a long time Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices were the only detectors that could detect individual quanta (magnetic fluxons). Sorry I'm not going into the details of this, but I gotta pee
Because you can study the physics of smaller and smaller systems. There are only a few areas that this device will be useful, but researchers are always fighting against noise while trying to increase the sensitivity of their devices.
Up until now the record for smallest current was about 100 attoamps with a dc squid. The great thing about them is that you can detect currents from 100 attoamps (if you're very, very careful) all the way up to milliamps, all in the same device in the same setup.
This new device with coupled quantum dots will only work on the attoamp scale, so is not as versatile, but the years of work that went into designing, fabricating, and measuring this device is astounding.
Think about it, they are measuring individual electrons, they are fighting against a huge number of electrons surrounding their devices, which experience random thermal noise. The thermal noise in the shielding around their device can generate eddy currents of the order of what they are detecting so they had to account for that too, and design special shielding.
Not only that, they have to think about the coupling of the quantum dots. You only want charge transfer from resonant tunneling, if the dots are too strongly coupled to their surroundings the quantum coherence is swamped, the linewidths of the levels being populated would be broadened too much. And if they are not coupled strong enough, you won't get enough resonant tunneling.
Of course there are a lot more considerations, going from concept, design parameters, actual method of fabrication and preparation, detection methods, and noise and data analysis.
All in all it's a great technical achievement to do what they've done.
A few years ago when I went out a second story window in my sleep, one of the many injuries I sustained was a broken left wrist. It meant I wasn't really able to leave the house for a while, so I spent the rest of the summer inside playing Deus Ex with the keyboard propped up vertically (I couldn't turn my wrist because of the pain/plaster cast)
:P
Of course, I don't use online banking, but for someone who does, I can't see how you could keep that from happening without being extremly careful. Just bookmark the main login page, no typo worries then......
Yeah, there was no need for the grandparents trolling of you.
There is a lot of merit in what you say, it was just your previous post was badly worded and implied a forceful influence of other people & cultures, effectively making them american
Learning about other cultures is very important, but there is a huge difference between learning about them, and having it forced upon you, and supplanting your own.
It's too late at night for me to write a better response (what with my finals starting on monday)
And of all groups to do it, the American media! The dumbing down of America (and corruption of your "traditional" value system) by the media is already fo concern amongst some americans. Sending those guys with their own agendas to re-educate people is insane (letting Fox News loose on the Afghans, scary thought).
I've nothing against americans, just don't force your culture on others.
Poland is a member of the EU. So your point is a little pointless.
Literally speaking it is east of Greenwich, but so is most of Europe.
Because global warming will shut down the circulating currents in the Atlantic. With no warm water circulating up from the equator Western Europe, and Eastern America will freeze (temperatures will drop by ~ 10-15 degrees in some cases).
As it stands, even if the path of the gulf stream is diverted further from e.g. Ireland (it's already moved by about 50 miles in the last decade), average temperatures in Ireland will drop, making the climate very similar to what Northern Scotland's is today.
Another awe-inspiring generalisation.
I'm going to be captain obvious here (so spank me), but generalisations are pointless (as is this one).
Maybe they're not "me-centric" and just not interested in the US? (damn, another potential generalisation) It's a pretty big world out there, and for some people there are more interesting places than the states. I don't know what part of Eastern Europe you were in, but you can't equate what small percentage of the total population you met there with all of Europe, with it's myriad cultures and opinions. Exact same way I wouldn't equate someone from Buffalo with someone from Denver.
A country's media is a good test to see how "me-centric" a country is.
Here in Ireland, in quality newspapers, (I'm not sure about tabloids, I don't read them) and on the news shows, a large proportion of it is devoted to world news. Then again we're a feckin small country.
It is the same over in Britain, BBC news is probably one of the best for unbiased (or as close as you can get) news coverage worldwide, and their quality broadsheets also have good world coverage.
It's the same for the rest of Western Europe (& I'll admit I know nothing about the media in Eastern Europe).
BR However, the same cannot be said of the media in the states. The major networks devote a pitiful amount of time/column space to news from outside the states.
"Kiss me oim Oirish, taar tee taar taar, tee tee tee tee"
Leprechaun Watch Webcam
at least with it being commisioned by Warner Bros there's a chance it might actually be made. It took poor Douglas Adams 20 odd years, and I don't know how many script rewrites to get to a point where they actually made it (and only once he popped the can).
Two words for you:
Rory
Gallagher
A master of blues, rock, & folk, his guitar playing skills were astounding, check out live versions of Tattoo'd Lady, Cradle Rock, As The Crow Flies, (Can be found on Irish Tour), Moonchild, Bad Penny (on Stagestruck), and I have a scarily good bootleg of Tatoo'd Lady.
Other Irish guitar legends include Gary Moore, The Edge (technically better guitarists out there, but a legend in his own right), Phil Lynnot (Bass Guitar, but you never specified what type), Johnny Fean from The Horslips (but I doubt anyone outside Ireland knows/knew about them), Christy Moore -> a giant of the folk scene for about 30/40 years now, he is an impeccable showman with a powerful presence.
Plenty more, but since they most likely won't be known outside Ireland, no point mentioning them.
As an aside Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix's Drummer) was Irish (Irish parents, but born in Middlesex, England), and of course those Gallagher brothers are 2nd generation Irish from England aswell.
I was lucky to be on a flight from Frankfurt to Narita (Tokyo) back in Sept when they first introduced it. The normal price was something like 15 for 30 mins, I can't remember. Either way they gave me a coupon so I gotta use it for free for 30mins.
:P
Pretty sweet being able to email your mates from thousands of metres above Siberia
You needed a wireless network card though, so it would have annoyed the hell out of me if I didn't have one. The speed was great enough for someone used to being on a dial-up (the wonders of modern Ireland -> the story on the digitisation of the projectors in Irish cinemas is hilarious)
Thank you for your measured response! I know it would have been easy to attack my previous posts.
:P which I need to get ready for.
And yes you are completely right on many points. After I posted that second comment I realised I missed my own point, about being impartial.
The greatest conflict for me is between the scientific method (which has had a profound effect on my way of thinking), and my first hand experiences of myself, and other people I know. Those experiences I had upset that paradigm I am still (I hope) in, especially compared with the professional, scientific experiments carried out indicating the homeopathy has no effect.
From my own experiences, conventional medicine had no effect (and they will admit themselves that there is no know cure, yet, for ME), but I would never advocate homeopathy as a standalone treatment. The homeopaths I know, all advise their patients to stay with whatever treatments their GPs have them on, and keep them informed about the homeopathy.
At the end of the day, I want to believe in homeopathy, while wanting to analyse it properly and go "Hey, what about all this evidence!". Which are fundementally opposed to each other. I don't know if there is a way to "prove" homeopathy, all the evidence suggests otherwise. Then again that could be due to fundamental flaws in the approach to the experiments, (like the studies of brownian motion before Einstein's treatement of it in his 1905 paper, the researchers were getting nonsensical results for the velocities of the particles, which would increase as you measured at smaller and smaller scales!) but that is unlikely. I once read a book trying to explain the physics behind it, it was hilarious. The author brought in ideas from QED, and string theory (primarily the energy from the molecules in solution being transferred and stored in higher dimensional elements of the water molecules!), it had no founding in reality (I suppose you could argue the same with string theory, m-theory and the like).
Indeed you are quite right about the origins and practise of homeopathy. I only know a certain amount about it (I wanted know more about what I was putting into my body, and where the techniques came from), but its methodology is something that any chemist/pharmacist would hate.
I wouldn't brand Chinese medicine with the same stick though. They had a fully developed system thousands of years before western medicine, and it was only codified after a long history of medicine before that.
(As an aside, I have heard -so it's only word of mouth- from chinese friends that one of the biggest problems with chinese medicine, in China anyway, is that in the past they kept the best remedies and knowledge within their families)
And it's a system that works, in principle yes medicine should take whatever works, and works safely to help improve/save peoples lives, but it's not always the case. There is still a lot of arrogance in the west about chinese medicine, and herbalists. The old remedies your granny might suggest most likely have been refuted, or more effective solutions discovered (there are the nuggets of gold though), but herbalism (at least those that are licenced, and have had training up to the required standard for their governing bodies) is not as voodoo-hoodoo as it normally thought.
Damn, I will have to stop there, I've a date in an hour
(PS I'm trying to find an article that was in an Irish Pharmaceutical magazine about research indicating that active molecules could be more effective if left bonded to larger molecules, as found in plant and herb remedies, as opposed to the isolated molecules in equivalent conventional medicines. Of course I haven't supplied any evidence to prove this article exists yet, so it can't be treated as being true - yet, hopefully!)
I felt I had to reply to this directly after reading it (I just posted a message on homeopathy just now) I normally don't take things on a faith basis, but after my experience with homeopathy I will admit I'm a believer.
After years of suffering from ME, and going nowhere with treatments (no quacks, I wouldn't waste my money, time, or ruin my hopes yet again) I've seen a massive turnaround over the last 9 months I've been on a homeopathic treatement programme. Yes there could have been other factors involved that I am unaware of. That they were coincidental with my treatement makes them unlikely but still possible. I don't know how I'm better, I just know that after following my homeopath's programme I am healthy again.
I don't like not knowing, but I attribute it to homeopathy.
You are bang on the mark with the bias in the experiments, and with other "believers". I don't think practictioners will ever admit to it not working, but beyond the research done so far, I don't know what else can be done in a scientific way to prove that it doesn't work.
To be honest I used to be very sceptical about homeopathy myself. I've suffered from ME for many years now, with nothing helping me (I won't bore you with the details you already know, here's a link to an excellent account of someone else with ME). I tried everything to bring me out of it, traditional medicine, health programmes, queried mental health issues (was I depressed because I was so sick, or was I sick because I was so depressed? I didn't think so, but how could I know), Chineese medicine (worked partially for a while, but I collapsed again), and finally homeopathy.
:P) and living & enjoying my life the way I should be.
I'm a hard nosed physicist so I was very skeptical about the whole process, and theory behind it. I can't (or won't) speak for anyone else, but for me homeopathy worked. It was slow process, and a lot of hard work, 5 months with one homeopath making very progress, but after about 9 months with another one, I have never been this physically good.
I wasted so much time being trapped in bed, or forcing myself to do things and suffer the consequences for weeks after. Now I swim every day for an hour, cycle 10km (over xmas I had more time so I did 22km every day for about 6weeks, except for 25th dec
While homeopathy has brought me this far, I have to maintain it more carefully than a normal person, if I slide even a little, I'll drop right back down.
I don't know how homeopathy works, how it really works. They say things like energy from the molecules you are diluting leave an imprint on the energy of the tincture, or that diluting down to infinestimal quantities makes the solutions more powerful. But sure as most of ye know people are trying to get rid of the infinites in our theories of nature, that they are not a true part of nature, and you can't dilute something to infinity.
More proper, impartial studies need to be done to investigate the phenomenon, not try to prove/disprove it. When politics or agendas get involved in science, it can (only saying can) result in loaded results, and hence bad science. Since there is no theory than can explain it (just like the fact that BCS theory can't explain high temperature superconductors, or new interesting research showing our entire outlook on magnetism, the M-J paradigm, might be wrong) any theories on how it works are derived from interpretations of the experimental results, and hence the experiment, or the interpretations need to be unbiased.
Almost all the posts so far have been business or industry related (with some interesting exceptions). Yet there are so many other opportunities out there, even for someone with "just" a cs degree, or with a combination of qualifications.
For example, if you were interested in the sciences (and even if you pick only one of them, eg physics) there are a huge number of different areas involving both fundamental and applied research using computational modelling. A pairing with any science degree can lead directly into the academic world (just like a cs degree), where in my opinion, the pay might not be as good as industry, but the social life, lower stress, and longer/more flexible time off leads to a better quality of life (along with ample opportunity to travel, especially if you use postdoc as a means for getting 2/3 year contracts in universities all round the world), and there is also plenty of room for working your way up (and it's not qualification based after your PhD, only results and a little political based).
Back on the money making business though :P...... :P
If you're only two years out from your primary degree, you don't want to be getting an MBA so early, it should be primarily for people in their mid 30's already on the managerial ladder. For anyone in their 20's it doesn't look good, because for many of the jobs they might apply for they would be over qualified in the eyes of the interviewer. They would be people expecting/demanding a higer pay, and would be likely to move on quickly to better things. As a consequence of this, for people who then reach their 30's without significant inroads to the admin/managerial side of things, it looks bad on their CV to have an MBA since their 20's and not make the progress that might be expected of MBA graduates.
I apologise for the wishy-washy-ness of the "maybe"s and "would"s etc etc, it just can't be helped by me