U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu (who just happens to be a Nobel prize winning physicist) gave a wonderful talk today at Argonne. I’ve managed to hear him speak 5 times during my career and each time he has been suitably inspiring. I had anticipated that this talk would focus on budgetary aspects of spending, what would be funding, changes to funding opportunities, streamlining to save money, etc... Instead it was mostly about science. I’ll try to summarize his talk below.


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Point #1 : Global warming is real. Temperatures are getting hotter. We have measured the combined energy deposited on the earth from the sun, solar wind, cosmic rays, etc... The energy varies on an 11 year cycle, but we’ve now been measuring for more than 3 full cycles and find that over those 3 cycles the total energy put into our planet each year remains constant.

However, we know that the total energy emitted by the earth has decreased, mostly due to the increased presence of greenhouse gases.

We know that the level of CO2 is increasing. It has increased dramatically since the industrial revolution. It is the highest it has been in at least 800,000 years (and that increase has come in ~ 100 years). That is significant. Most changes to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere occur much more slowly. Not only is our level of CO2 very high (for the last million years), but the rate of change is dramatic.

At points in the more distant past we do know that there were higher levels of CO2 naturally in the atmosphere. But guess what, the temperatures during those times were much, much hotter. In fact, we know quite well exactly how hot we need to make the earth to melt the Antarctic ice. This makes the point in many respects that increasing greenhouse gases really does in fact lead to global warming.

Furthermore, we know that the new CO2 in the atmosphere is man-made. Carbon-14, that great isotope for carbon dating, should be existing “in equilibrium” in the atmosphere (where it is made from cosmic ray interaction with Nitrogen), and on the surface of the earth (where the C-14 is easily mixed). Yet the CO2 we’re seeing in the atmosphere is mostly C-12. This is because the carbon that is contained within fossil fuels has been underground long enough for all (essentially) of the C-14 to have decayed. So, aside from putting additional C-14 in the atmosphere with nuclear explosions, we know that the CO2 increase in the atmosphere must be coming from man made sources.

Constant energy input, lessening energy output due to CO2 increase, CO2 increase being man-made, all of these things point to man made global warming.

Point 2) First the price of oil will increase.

We are lagging behind the rest of the world, most notably China, with regards to developing energy technology. Energy efficient transmission, nuclear energy, sustainable energy sources, efficient buildings and transportation, are all places where we are lagging far behind. And it’s not just China, we’re behind countries such as Spain and Italy. We are, in effect, now consumers not just for foreign energy sources, but also of foreign energy technology.

Point 3) We are at a Sputnik moment. There are significant energy problems on the horizon and the United States is doing far too little to keep pace. We have a huge challenge and need much more than just funding for the immediate problem. We need a long range, long term vision. That vision must include significant investment in science education and in supporting both academic and applied science, particularly that done at universities.

Every year the American Physical Society holds the March Meeting. This year we’re all in Dallas TX. It is (I believe) the single largest yearly meeting of physicists in the world and it is devoted to topics within condensed matter physics, materials science, and similar systems. Let me state that in a different way... Our one section has a larger participation than the other sections of physics combined! Well, maybe it’s not that big if you put ALL of them together... but this is still quite a large meeting.

It’s quite fun to attend for a variety of reasons.

First, most people that attend are presenting something. That is always a great deal of fun and a great chance to help create your presence within the community. Telling people about what I’m doing is, for me at least, one of my favorite activities. Call me a narcissist if you must.

Second, you get to attend talks by all these other people on a huge variety of subjects. I quite excited to learn about what others are doing within my active areas of research (surface science), but also to hear a wide variety of things such as topological insulators, complex oxides, magnetism and much, much more. At any given time I can always find several different talks that I’m interested in seeing (hmmm... what’s the difference between hearing a talk and seeing a talk?). In fact, that’s one of the frustrating things. Very often you really wish you were in 2 or 3 different places at once.

Lastly, and very importantly, one of the reasons to have these meetings is to see your friends and collaborators, both past and present. Every year I attend I am greeted warmly by friends and former professors (Oscar Vilches being among my favorites!), many of whom I’ve not seen since the last annual meeting. It is sad that so many of us live so far apart as it would truly be great to talk with everyone face to face more often. Some times the discussion is very much related to ongoing work, possible collaborations, or finishing that languishing paper from the past each of us carries around. But very often it’s also a chance to see and hear how your friends have been fairing in the world. This in and of itself is reason enough to attend.

This year there is the added benefit of the meeting being held in Dallas TX. This is a nice change for me to see some friends and family, even if only briefly.

As an aside, it’s kind of funny to see all these physicists and other scientists running around in a very small area. For lunch and dinner we spill out onto the streets and into view of the public. There are several stereotypes (many of them not positive) that can readily be seen.

I found a job advertisement yesterday that absolutely floored me.

50 new faculty positions in physics being created at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in mainland China.

I was absolutely wordless. That news comes in the same week when we have been threatened with about 1/3 of our entire work force (yes, that means many of the scientists) being fired from Argonne. That’s about 1000 jobs we’re going to lose at ANL alone according to HR-1. Granted that’s a worst case scenario, but we’re not expecting to get through the budget debacle unscathed. At the same time, the number of available open faculty positions in physics in the United States has crashed. In October things were looking very good, with many positions being advertised. At this point lots of those positions have been canceled. Few places are going to be hiring new people when we’re threatened with losing so much funding.

And yet, things look pretty good in other parts of the world. 50 new positions this year (with many more rumored next year) at a single university. As an aside, HUST is already one of the top ranked universities in China, and it’s not the only organization undergoing massive increases in funding, people, and infrastructure.

Obama seems to be on board at least with increased science and education funding. That is probably part of the reason the GoP is so adamant to reduce our funding in the US. Incidentally, I believe we’re being reduced to funding levels as seen in 2008.

One option instead of just outright firing 1/3 of our staff would be to furlough the entire lab for a couple of months. That’s still a disaster as many of us wouldn’t be able to take a two month hit with no employment. Either way we’re going to be losing a lot of people. And it would seem pretty obvious where many of us will end up going.

There is an awesome document called The America COMPETES Act (which actually was passed back in 2007). It has no teeth and does not seem “binding” in any sense. But it’s a great read for those interested in seeing what some of the greatest minds in science and education think we need to be doing to ensure the future stability of our economy, provide for our security, and re-establish America as the premier country for science, innovation, and industry. It’s interesting because some countries have been following this exact plan. Instead of outlining what would happen here, the plan instead outlined what other countries could do to get ahead, and how best we could fail.

But perhaps I should be looking at this as an exciting opportunity. It would be great fun to live abroad for a significant period of time. The support and funding would be incredible too.


Zàijiàn !

This is just all sorts of awesomeness put together : http://www.1023.org.uk/

Basically it’s nice public outreach program regarding homeopathy. I’ve never understood why this makes sense to people. Just the principle of taking something that causes particular symptoms, diluting it down in many cases until absolutely none of the original remains in the mixture (really), and then using it as a “medicine” has proved utterly baffling to me. Moreover, despite not making much (any?) sense just on paper, it’s never been shown to have any effect beyond a placebo. That’s not terribly surprising since you’ve essentially diluted away the substance that you started with leaving you something you’d expect should be just as effective as a sugar pill.

The videos on the site are really entertaining. Especially James Randi and the Mitchell & Webb video. My favorite part, “says right here on the label, ‘No side effects!’ That’s true enough.”

Here’s a reasonably good paper (well, good based on my pedestrian understanding of climate science) regarding the relative impact of possible CO2 mitigation:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7326/abs/nature09653.html

(sorry to those of you that cannot get the Nature papers directly)

The general gist of the article seems to be twofold and of relatively good news. First they say that CO2 mitigation efforts could have a definite impact on the conditions in the arctic. As such, they find that we have not yet crossed a “tipping point” from which the reversal of changes becomes much more difficult. Secondly they do not seem to find any tipping point, at least in the short term, to exist. All of that should come as welcome news, especially if you happen to like polar bears. Figures 3 and 5 seem particularly easy to follow.

Here’s an interesting little quote on how to start a war:

“Of course the people don’t want war. … But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. … All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same way in any country.”

That quote comes from Hermann Göring. I suppose he had some experience at it. I always cringe a bit when I hear how perfectly reasonable discussion of reducing the supply and availability of nuclear weapons and material gets supplanted by comments (usually phrased in an asinine fashion) of how it will weaken our country.

sigh...

I came across a really useful online essay/collection of thoughts about the language people should (or should not) use when teaching physics or physical science. The author is Donald Simanek, an emeritus professor of physics and he begins with a quote from one of my favorite books.

His essay is very worthwhile for anyone teaching physics. It’s probably not the “single best thing” you can do to improve your teaching, but it’s nonetheless a wonderful collection of common errors of language that we use. And imperfections in the speech of an instructor really can have a significant effect on pedagogy. So far I’ve even found a couple of statements that I make on his list. They’re easy to dismiss as unimportant or as being too pedantic. However, if what I’m saying and what I’m trying to say are 2 different things, it really can make things more difficult for students.

Currently I’m working on some simulations and it strikes me as rather difficult to obtain a generally “realistic” model, despite most of it being quite easy to understand.

The system in question is a series of interacting magnetic particles. The basic ingredients are all there; a couple of terms that favor alignment of like spins near by, a term that favors opposite alignment for spins far away, a term to control the external applied field and a few different schemes for introducing disorder, changing the spins, and such. All in all, it’s not too difficult to understand and even to get it into a computer program that does the basics.

Along the way you may encounter a few difficulties if you’re new at writing numerical models (such as how to account for boundaries in your simulation, or how to solve various equations and in which order to do them). But with some practice and a decent library built up over time (or through the use of other people’s libraries) you can have the basic thing going.

What strikes me as hard at the moment is settling on an area of “parameter space” for which the model can describe what we’ve seen experimentally. Ideally what I’d like is the following: to find a set of parameters such that I only need to vary one of them to properly describe things. Now, I’ve got 3 different parameters (well, 4 actually, but I’m forcing one of them to be equal to 1 since I can divide all the other parameters by it). Two of those parameters I think I can link together by a particular relationship and then only have to vary one of them. However, right now everything seems very, very “touchy.” Small adjustments in even one of the 3 parameters can take it from describing things pretty well to looking very meaningless.

More good news of late :

We appear to be headed towards a real, positive change in our nation’s (and hence hopefully the world’s) nuclear weapons policy. I think too many of us assume that this threat somehow vanished with the end of the cold war. Many of my students have not even lived in that era and seem to find the whole matter somewhat unbelievable. And I suppose that’s a matter of great concern as these weapons and devices still very much exist, and are still very much ready to be used in very short order.

Aside from utter global annihilation, we also live with perhaps a much more real threat today from small groups/terrorists that could perhaps obtain such a weapon. While large nation states may be seen to be somewhat reliable (or at least readable), small groups with no concern for their personal welfare pose a significant threat. I think few young people today really understand the nature of these devices and what incredible devastation can be brought by even a single detonation. It’s sort of the modern “Base Commander Ripper” from Dr. Strangelove.

Anyhow, I am encouraged that we seem to be moving towards not only fewer devices, but hopefully better control over those we do possess.

Great news, Simon Singh has won his appeal of a lawsuit brought by a chiropratic organization in England for his (well founded) criticism of some of their beneficial health claims. Despite having a great deal of evidence based medicine (you know, actual science!), the libel laws in Britain allow science writers (and others) to be sued in sort of an “guilty until you prove you’re innocent” fashion. The effect has been a sustained choking of anyone writing critical statements of various fringe, cult, pseudo-science, etc groups/people.

Anyhow, it appears that this is a very positive step.



----- From Sile Lang, Sense About Science -----
 
Dear friends
A very quick note to make sure you heard that Simon Singh’s appeal in his case with the BCA was upheld today. It means that Simon can now defend his article as comment rather than as fact, as Justice Eady had originally ruled.
Simon said today: “It is ridiculous that it has cost £200,000 to establish the meaning of a handful of words. I am delighted that my meaning has been vindicated by three of the most powerful judges in the country, and I relish the opportunity to defend this meaning in court. However, I am still angry that libel is so horrendously expensive. That is just one of the reasons why the battle for libel reform must continue.”
You can read more comments from campaigners and supporters at www.libelreform.org/news/450-judgement-in-simon-singh-libel-case
And the judgment and Simon’s lawyer’s notes on what this means for Simon’s case and for libel reform is here: http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/473/
Jack of Kent has blogged on the ruling here: http://jackofkent.blogspot.com/
The Guardianhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/apr/01/simon-singh-wins-libel-court
The Daily Telegraphhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/7543685/Science-writer-Simon-Singh-wins-Court-of-Appeal-libel-battle.html
BBC Radio 4 World at One http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rlff7
BBC online http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8598472.stm
And check here for updated lists of press coverage: www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/473/
Keep an eye out for Simon, his lawyer Robert Dougans and members of the libel reform campaign on Channel 4 news, the BBC News channel, Sky News and BBC radio stations this evening.
Simon, and the campaign for libel reform, both still have a very long fight ahead of us. We are very pleased  the three most powerful members of the Judiciary in England have recognised  the need for libel law reform. We need to make sure everyone else does too.
Best
Sile 

Both the physics and chemistry Nobel prizes awarded this year are quite “close to home.”

The Physics Nobel was awarded Charles Kao, Willard Boyle, and George Smith for the developments in two different, though related, fields. Their work led to modern telecommunications and charge coupled device (CCD) cameras. Essentially they developed the necessary science to create fiber optics and the “electronic eye.” There work is fundamental to our ability to do any sort of electronic imagining, regardless of the field of science or medicine. It’s also made your cell-phone cameras, USB cameras, digital cameras, and pretty much anything else like it possible. So, the next time you take a picture with your cellphone, thank Kao, Boyle, and Smith (among many others). The development of fiberoptics revolutionized our ability to communicate. There work has directly influenced your life.

Kao’s most important contributions are in developing fiber-optics. Until that point communication either had to be done through radio waves(or other electro-magnetic radiation) or with direct copper wires and electrons. Both radio communication and metal conductors have disadvantages as a communication medium. Communicating by electromagnetic radiation waves requires either “line of sight” between the two points or some pretty clever bouncing of signals (either low-tech by literally bouncing them off objects or the atmosphere, or high-tech via satellites). The old “copper wire” suffers from a different ailment, namely that it takes significant power, is slower than light, and it’s more difficult to “squeeze” information into the same “space” (bandwidth). Fiber-optics circumvents all of these disadvantages. Light can travel through the medium more quickly, with less signal loss, with greater information content, and go between any two points that you can run a cable across (not only that, but the material itself is relatively cheap).

Boyle and Smith made significant contributions to the development of electronic cameras. Ask yourself how your digital camera actually records an image. The fundamental components to a CCD camera are tiny pieces of semi-conductor that become charged when they adsorb light. The amount of charge on a piece of semi-conductor is the “brightness,” and can be measured directly by the circuitry in the camera. Each piece of semiconductor is a “pixel,” and when you’ve got enough pixels in a small area and the appropriate optics to focus an image, then you can create a digital picture.

It’s also worth noting that Bell Labs where Boyle and Smith (now very, very sadly essentially defunct) were employed has added another Nobel prize, bringing its total to 7 different physics prizes.

Needless to say that my research would not be possible without the CCD camera (though ours detect x-rays and not visible light) and I benefit enormously from the ability to transfer huge amounts of data (generated by the CCD cameras!).

The Chemistry Nobel prize was awarded to Thomas Steitz, Ada Yonath, and Venkatraman Ramakrishnan for their work in understanding the structure and function of ribosomes. While being very “wet” by my standards, the work is in practice quite similar to what I do, just on very different materials and systems. The ribosome is a “protein factory” that takes RNA and aminoacids and turns them into proteins. It is a very large, complicated molecule compared to most of what has been studied previously (in fact, I’m even sure it’s a molecule but more an assembly of molecules. anyhow, I’ll be honest about my ignorance here). What makes it “close to home” is that the tools they used to explore the ribosome were modern x-ray light sources, and in large part, the Advanced Photon Source here at Argonne Lab. They’ve published around 60 papers of work done at the lab.

They use the x-rays to explore ribosomes. We use different beamlines at the same light source to study the surfaces of metals and metal oxides. It’s not the first Nobel prize awarded for work done at Argonne, but it’s always very exciting to see recognition of the great work that can be done here.

A short article Héctor G. Riveros and Julián Betancourt was published in The Physics Teacher this month that is quite fun. The paper centers on what happens when compasses interact.

Basically, if the magnetic fields are strong enough and you bring them close enough together, then compasses will influence each other. Ok fine, that’s not so interesting in and of itself until you make use of it. They arrayed lots of compasses together in a hexagonal packing arrangement, all as close as possible to each other.


On the top, the compasses are responding to an external magnetic field.





What’s really cool is when they take the external magnetic field away as you see on the right hand side (or bottom). The compasses form magnetic domains!

This is a really beautiful demonstration of how magnetic materials behave and I bet would make a great tool for teaching. I would not have thought that the magnetic fields produced by individual compasses would be sufficient to cause this kind of interaction.

Now, the next step is to see if you could add temperature to the mix. Given that we’re approximating spins as compasses, then it might be possible to approximate temperature as some sort of small random motion. Take each compass, put it on a small spring (or place small springs between each), and then shake the how ensemble. Eventually the shaking should be enough to cause the compasses to lose their orientation and the magnetic domains will disappear. Voila, you’ve got a Curie temperature.

Yesterday was the end of an era. Professor Stephen Hawking has resigned the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics.

Thankfully he is not resigning the post due to complications from his illness. Rather it is apparently academic tradition to step down from that post at the age of 67. However, I think it worth taking a few moments to pause and contemplate his story.

Hawking is one of the most recognized faces in physics, if not all of science. Many times I’ve asked students to name a few physicists and Hawking is always among those listed (though disappointingly sometimes as ``that guy in the wheelchair” ).

Hawking suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or commonly called just ALS*. He was diagnosed while very young, still in school and unmarried at the time. The disease is usually a death sentence with a 10 year mortality rate of over 80%. Despite this illness, he has been very productive in science and one of its most inspirational personalities.

Hawking’s work usually deals with cosmology and astrophysics, the universe on a very, large scale. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of black-holes, the evolution of the universe, and the properties of the universe today. He has authored nearly 200 articles, books and letters on various subjects in theoretical physics. All of this, while having to overcome more difficulty than many of us can understand.

I first came across Hawking’s name and work as a kid when I found a copy of “A Brief History of Time.” For many years that book (and a later one by Weinberg) formed most of my understanding of modern theoretical physics and cosmology. I remember reading it again while in high-school, perhaps understanding a little more from it, and greatly thinking how cool it would be to be a physicist. At the time it wasn’t quite enough to push me to the realization that perhaps I actually could study physics. It was however a step in that direction from my early life.

So let us wish Prof. Hawking well, let us be inspired by his story and work, and let us try to meet adversity with dignity in our own lives when it arises.

---

*it’s unfortunate that the acronym is also shared by the Advanced Light Source where I did my thesis work. I have a baseball cap from the ALS with the letters, a logo depicting the synchrotron, and the full name spelled out in smaller type. I’ve been asked several times why I’m wearing a hat with the name of a disease by people that don’t bother to read the smaller words below the letters ALS. sigh...

It is time for me to begin my search for a faculty position in earnest. I’d actually prefer not to discuss many of the details of this process and will not be disclosing much of that information. In fact, I find much of the information to be rather inappropriate to publicly talk about.

However, there is something that I’ve noticed that I would like to expand upon that I was not expecting explicitly at the outset. Part of the process of applying for faculty positions involves preparing statements of teaching philosophy and research intent. It’s this preparation that has struck me in a rather interesting fashion, in a way that actually reminds me of my physics qualifying exam experience.

It may seem trivial to write down a “statement of research intent” or “teaching philosophy.” However, in practice this has been quite a project and resembles very much the process I go through for writing academic papers and proposals. My own approach to writing papers often boils down to an organic ``growing” of the paper. First, I tend to try to write down the principle idea/result to convey. Then I write everything I can think of that might possibly be important, details and all. This causes the manuscript to balloon to a length usually much to large to be suitable, and to be fair, many of the details included in the first draft are not sufficiently important to be included. At that point I begin to cut down the manuscript into something smaller. Each time asking if a paragraph or sentence is really needed. Eventually I end up with a shorter, more to the point paper that is suitable to submit for publication. This also describes the process I’ve been using to create my own application package for these faculty positions.

It has actually been rather enjoyable to write all these things down and edit the thoughts into a coherent whole. It’s also rather interesting in that much of the information are about subjects that I feel rather strongly about. The whole process has been very beneficial in providing sort of a unified vision of what I want to do. What are all the parts? What do they have to do with each other? How do they work together?

It’s that unification that reminds me of my qualifying exam. The purpose of that exam should* be for the students to study enough physics over a singular period of time to develop a unified ``world view” and approach to physics. That approach may be very different from how others do physics (and often is), but the important thing is to have one and to have a enough physics in your head at once to see the similarities across many different fields of physics (a unified vision). This idea may be a bit idealistic when it comes to students actually taking the exam. But to me taking the exam is not the important thing, preparing for it is. That is where the benefit comes from.

After spending quite a bit of time on my application package, it feels like a similar unification has taken place. It’s a feeling that now more than ever before I know what I want to do with my career and life in science.

We’ve had an interesting turn of events at the Gordon Conference this year. Everyone from our current group is attending the conference. Indeed, a rather large number of people from ANL are all coming to the conference. Interestingly, there only appear to be a handful of us here so far.

Kerri and I took a rather odd route to get here. We went first to NY (in order to stop there for a significant period of time on the way back) and then up to Maine the next evening. Needless to say, I doubt anyone else went first to Albany and then took a car up to Maine.

The lab uses a single travel agency for official travel. It seems that there were 8-9 x-ray science people from ANL all booked on the same flight, including everyone else from my group. This flight turned out to be a “nightmare”. There were significant delays before the flight left Chicago. It then made it about half the way when one of the pilots was walking back through the cabin a few times. The plane then turned around and went back to Chicago with a “technical problem.” Apparently 1 of the instrument flight systems on the plane had failed (1 of 3, so it’s not that the plane was without sensors), but it made it such that they did not wish to attempt an instrument landing (and indeed we had fog, wind, & rain).

ANL people should be slowly trickling in tomorrow.

Anyhow, thankfully I’m here and my talk isn’t for a couple of days anyway.

I’ve never been to Maine before and the country looks just beautiful here. In fact, this entire trip has really made me miss the northeast countryside.

A friend of mine sent me a link that somehow I’ve managed to miss for the past year, the Physics Education Research Jobs blog. This is a huge resource for those of us looking for a position in physics academia (especially for those of us thinking that teaching is important).

And speaking of, I think things are becoming more and more clear that I wish to teach. That’s not to say that I want to leave research or am unhappy with it. But I do want to be in the classroom very, very much.

I’ve got a busy month ahead. In fact, all the members in our group will be busy. We’ve got 3 weeks of beamtime at the Advanced Photon Source. The time will be split pretty evenly between the three post-docs. Happily for me, my project runs first. This should see an increase in blog entries as I tend to get wordy while sitting at the beamline.

This project will see a return to my earlier project to tidy up some loose ends for a second paper. We’re going to be studying various gas phase interactions with gold surfaces, greatly extending our first paper on the subject. We’ve almost had enough to write a paper for a while. That is we’ve seen some very interesting behavior that we just didn’t have enough time to get fully characterized with systems other than what we’ve been talking about. It’s taken a little while for us to get beamtime to finish the second part of the project (and hopefully open up a third part!). That’s due in part to two different things. First, I’ve had another project (the speckle experiment!) that took precedence in terms of my own effort. But we’ve also had a little trouble getting the time scheduled. Anyhow, that’s behind us at the moment and we’ve got time to finish this up.

It’s going to be fun in another aspect. We’re going to try an experimental technique that’s new to me : resonant surface scattering. I suppose it is similar in many respects to more traditional “in the neighborhood of a resonance” scattering techniques. But there are some subtleties here that should make for an interesting time. Modeling the data to figure out what it does in fact tell us may be the most difficult portion of the process. The other post-docs all have projects that will run too. So in general we’re going to be doing quite a wide variety of surface science experiments in the coming month.

There was an interesting post on Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy Blog in September. It showed an interview with Brian Cox and David King. Cox came off from the interview looking much, much better than King. The comments seemed to capitalize on that and it seemed rather quickly that the merit of the discussion or points of view presented by both King and Cox were lost. Not being an expert on funding in the UK, nor on the politics of either King of Cox, but seeing what I thought might be valid question lost in the roar of criticism, I tried to write up my thoughts on the matter in a reasonable fashion.

The short of my view is this (irrespective of King or Cox) : Each year a sum of money far too small is allocated to science. As such, there has to be some rather tough decisions made about which projects receive funding and how much. It is reasonable to consider placing some of the decision based upon science that is likely to have some impact on large problems. I find the argument for “basic” science funding based upon spin-offs to be largely lacking. It’s not untrue that “basic” science often makes significant, even world changing contributions. However, “applied” science also very frequently has unexpected spin-offs that result. I think the primary justification for “basic” science with little or no direct connection to real-world problems needs to come from human curiosity and wonder.

There were several comments that followed. Sadly many seemed to be of the one or two line variety without much substance. I did get a comment that I disagreed with and thus posted up a further response. As I put a bit of effort into each I’d like to keep a copy of them here, just cut and paste.

post 1 :

# michael s pierce Says:
September 13th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

With all respect to Brian Cox, my personal point of view is that the largest reason to pursue such interests as current high-energy physics needs to be for the innate value that we humans place on understanding our universe at different levels. Call it curiosity, call it exploration, whatever, it certainly has it’s own value. But I find the degree to which Cox bases his argument on spin-offs to be rather second rate. As we push back the unknown we discover new questions, problems, and directions. Some of those have direct bearing revealing new ideas & technologies that directly benefit us. Other times they bring to light dangers we were not previously aware of (or thought we could do nothing about). However, Cox’s argument about spinoff’s is equally applicable to the more applied sciences as well. Dollar qua dollar I’d expect the spinoffs from “applied” fields to be no worse or better than spinoffs from “basic” science.

It can be cast in a different light. A classic example being Tang and Teflon from Apollo. Truly, if we wanted such things we could have made a much cheaper investment directly without going to the moon. I am disappointed that we spent the money? No, my point is that if we’re going to spend such vast sums of money, we need to sell it to the public for what I think is the right reasons.

I think King’s argument can often be lost on people. Understand that he’s not against science funding (he himself being a world renowned surface scientist, physicist and chemist before stepping into more of a political life) nor is he against funding “basic” science in general. It’s a question of balance and sadly the question of funding has been all too exacerbated by the erosion of monetary support. Funding hits has come across the board, it’s not just high-energy physics, it’s not just basic science, it’s impacted everything.

Perhaps it’s important to understand where a person like King is coming from. His field has both beautiful basic science and technologically important applied aspects to it. He’s witnessed incredible accomplishments in his career (having made quite a few himself), but has also seen too frequently the numerous instances where advances in science either happened very slowly or simply did not happen due to funding woe.

His own field is at the heart of basic energy. The problems he has seen and worked on for much of his life have had direct bearing on both energy use/consumption and climate change (along with many other things). It’s true that as Cox says, that (for instance) particle beam physics has bearing on cancer therapy. However, the proximity of that work is likely often (I suspect, though not being an expert in that field I’ll leave it at suspect) not very closely directed to such research. There is a spinoff, there is benefit, but money and effort directed explicitly towards that end would probably be a much better buy if your goal is treating cancer.

I am very happy that high-energy physics is in the headlines and am likewise dismayed at the failure (largely) of say my own field to engage the public with our own exciting discoveries. There has to be a balance between funding for research both basic and applied.
However, significant weight must be given to directly (and adequately) funding work that has the highest likelihood of successfully solving some of our greatest problems. That last sentence is what I believe to be the crux of King’s argument and is one not to be taken lightly.

Michael

PS : and yes, I am elated that the LHC is about to begin operation. I am ecstatic that we will find “Mr. Higgs” or a set of particles filling that roll. And the experimentalist mindset I have is absolutely giddy at the fact that a simply countless number of competing theories produced in the past few decades may be put to rest (and maybe, some of them confirmed!).


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# michael s pierce Says:
October 28th, 2008 at 4:16 pm

Apologies for not replying sooner, I only noticed your response a day ago. Please permit me to be a bit verbose if only for the benefit of others reading this. Much of my response is a more general statement and despite its length (and discussion of facts well known to you), it is not intended to be condescending.

I disagree with your statement regarding much of King’s research. Many of the parts of his research I am aware of tend to be rather important for basic energy. While much of it is highly academic, much of it also has significant relevance the “applied” side of science. There is of course a spectrum between academic and applied, but it seems to me that much of his work is quite closely related to basic energy research with at least some relevance to industrial and applied scientists. I think that is especially true if you compare his work to other fields that clearly are further towards the “basic” side of the spectrum. I’ll pick the two best examples that come to my mind at the moment: Alternative power sources such as fuel cells (yes, I’m well aware that they’re not the panacea they’re often made out to be) and cleaner conventional engines.

I think that basic science in support of fuel cells (particular the understanding of Pt surfaces and the ‘model’ fuel CO) and oxidation of gases such as NO and CO into less harmful products would qualify quite well for science with a rather direct connection to energy and the environment. Platinum crystal facets, Pt alloys, and Pt micro/nano particles have been some of the more promising and interesting surfaces with regards to catalysts for fuel cells. It is also true that catalytic converters providing a means for oxidation reactions such as CO to CO2 and NO to N & O, (among others) make for cleaner burning engines. Again, that interesting metal platinum makes an appearance. Glancing through a few searches it looks like he’s got at least around 60-70 papers that deal with the activity of gases such as CO and NO on surfaces. That number could easily be well below that actual mark. I’m certain he was often guided by curiosity and academic interest, but I imagine a reasonable amount of his motivation had to do with the potential payoff of understanding these things better.

Perhaps my original wording is misleading towards implying something to the effect of “King makes Fuel Cells or King’s research makes your car produce no CO.” If that is the impression my words give, then they should be restated. Nonetheless, I do think there’s a quick and ready connection between much of his work (over 3 decades of it) and what can be applied towards cleaner power and engines. I find it hard to imagine that the potential payoff of understanding those systems and reactions played little role in his motivation. Remove the work by people such as King or Ertl and the industrial scientists trying to develop fuel cells and catalytic converters would be at a genuine loss. Compare that to the contributions of many a successful scientist rooted in high-energy physics (such as Brian Cox or even a more senior researcher). They often do fascinating work, but the connection towards real world problems is very often (not always, but very often) much further removed. They rely much more heavily on innate human curiosity/answering big questions (truly often a valid reason) and potential spin-offs (I find that less compelling as I see both “basic” and “applied” science generating unexpected benefits). It seems to me that the work of King, while often very academic, still has significant importance to the “real world.” I think you’ll find true applied industrial scientists working in basic energy that do cite some of King’s work. Perhaps I’m lacking imagination but I’m not seeing that direct of a connection for someone like Cox (and I shouldn’t have to say this again, but here goes : that’s not a knock against his research based on a curiosity or wonder metric).

There’s perhaps a bit of confusion for some people upon our use of the terms “basic” and “applied.” They’re often stated as if there’s a clear and distinct difference upon which we all agree. Often that’s the case. However, very often that line is rather blurry, especially depending upon your point of view. The terms “basic” and “applied” science often have different meanings depending upon who is using them. Typically “applied” is used when there is a specific end in mind other than answering inherently interesting questions and satisfying curiosity. Typically the term “basic” is used to describe work that is principally undertaken to sate our curiosity. However, the “line” between the two is drawn in very different places. I consider my own work on the basic side. I’ve given talks before industry crowds and often had the response, “that’s interesting, but really too academic to be useful to what we’re concerned with.” At the same time, many of my friends in high-energy physics or astronomy look at my work as deep in “applied” territory.

In fact while I think my own work does fall on the “basic” side, it’s near enough to occasionally be of interest to those on the “applied” side. I take a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction in that respect. I think it’s a fascinating, interesting place to do science. I’m also happy that my work does contribute (in my case in only a small way so far) towards things that I think might make the world a better place. King’s work that I’m familiar with often falls in this middle ground (though with much greater impact than my own).

My defense of King is not based on any personal knowledge of the man nor am I very informed about his politics. Living in the states, I’m well aware that there’s probably a great deal I do not know or understand about the state of science funding in the UK. Rather, it’s based on the (admittedly) limited amount that I have seen such as the above video and my knowledge as a scientist (which compared to quite a few people is also limited, I am only a post-doc). However, from that I see a great deal of people bashing King with arguments that seem very ad hominem and without recognizing that you should give very serious consideration to the following situation.

Regrettably we only have a certain amount of money each year with which to fund science. It is far, far too low an amount to fund everything and everyone. As such, while we may work in the long term towards hopefully getting better science funding (and education), in the short term we’re faced with a very serious issue. We’re going to have to decide that some things don’t get funding or get much less money than they need. Perhaps it is in our genuine interest to weight some of our decision about which projects receive money (and how much) based upon those programs that are working more directly towards problems with a broad societal or potentially global impact?

I think that’s a tough and fair question to ask.

Best wishes,

Michael

Here’s a great little program I ran across recently and have been trying with much glee, Papers. The basic idea is one that’s probably occurred to most scientists with varying degrees of frequency. The problem is how to personally manage an ever growing knowledge-base of papers. Each day, not only does the sum total of scientific literature increase, but as a scientist the boundary of your own knowledge also gets extended. Frequently you run across new papers that are interesting. You’ve got to decide if it’s worth keeping an electronic copy and if so, how to put it in an accessible place. Many of us (myself included) break down and being manually categorizing papers and then renaming the files by some pneumonic that makes sense. Retrieving the papers then becomes the next challenge. Having a way to search through all those papers would be nice, but in the absence of anything I’ve often been forced back to the publisher’s website to use their search engine (or to a broad search engine such as google scholar). This really defeats the whole purpose. Why bother in the first place? And how about having a sortable list of papers, broken by subject with your own comments/rating/thoughts included?

A couple of Dutch biologists actually did something about it.

On Tuesday the 2008 Nobel Prize in physics was announced, going to Nambu, Kobayashi, and Maskawa for their related work on symmetry break in high energy physics. I won’t go into any detail (and at this point I probably can’t go into much detail as it’s been so long since I wore a high-energy physics hat), but I noticed something rather funny on the morning news.

This being “Chicago” it was big news that one of the prize winners was in the physics faculty at U of Chicago (Nambu). The reporter tried to convey the idea of what symmetry breaking is with the pencil example. However, he kind of mixed up the explanation and his mistaken interpretation then propagated through the rest of the newsroom as others tried it.

The idea is this : Suppose you have a symmetric pencil and you stand it on end on a flat surface. All things being equal, there’s no reason it should fall any particular direction. But eventually some air currents or vibrations are enough and it falls over. It has to fall a particular direction, but before hand there’s not necessarily a direction that it should fall. Now that the pencil is on its side pointing a particular direction we say that the earlier symmetry is broken. Since there was no way to predict which direction it would fall we say the symmetry was broken “spontaneously.” Say it fell pointing due east. It could just have easily fallen pointing north, south, west, or any other direction.

Anyhow, the reporter had been told the example and managed to get the part about the pencil falling. However, he didn’t understand what was meant and instead described it as a pencil being held perpendicular and being dropped. This in turn led to the news-casters (including the weatherman) dropping pencils and pondering an incorrect notion of symmetry breaking. I suspect he was told the example (perhaps he even asked someone!). However, I think this was clearly a case where showing someone the example would have produced a much better result. Anyhow, I got a real kick out of seeing them drop pencils. sigh...

That said, the award brings with it the whole host of questions and detractions. Why pick a particular subject and not another (I was hoping for condensed matter such as Pendry for the negative index of refraction work)? And even within that sub-field and the idea it’s being awarded for, there are usually several individuals all of whom made significant, major contributions. How do you decide when so many are involved? For symmetry breaking in high energy or nuclear physics, why not Cabibbo? why not Higgs (he missed out on it in 79)? Why not Goldstone? The 2007 Nobel Prize in chemistry certainly was close to home though! I was throughly giddy about it (though again the same questions apply). All in all though, I’m much, much happier that we have the prizes (though there should be more) despite the nagging questions.

Our paper, "CO-Induced Lifting of Au(001) Surface Reconstruction " has finally been published! It is in Journal of Physical Chemistry C as a letter and I am very happy about it. The article is the first one listed on that page, complete with a nice graphic that all the letters are allowed to include. This was quite a process, longer than I'd hoped, but it's done. However, I'm not aware of any of my papers ever being "quick" or "easy." It never seems to be so easy as "just writing up what we've found," making a figure or two and sending it off for someone to publish.

We have a plethora of comments on our papers at the moment (and it's a good thing).

My big paper at the moment has come back with reasonably positive reviews. One referee is actually quite happy as is, the other referee isn't very happy with some parts of the paper and has not recommended it for publication. However, even that isn't such a bad thing. So why is it not a bad thing that the review had some negative comments? Well, to be honest, it's almost expected! The referees are expected to be tough on manuscripts (especially for journals like this) and it's rare to find even one referee with only minor revision requests, let alone both. However, what's good is that the referee, while skeptical of certain elements gave concrete questions and feedback. It's easier to evaluate and address concrete items than it is to deal with comments that are essentially rhetorical.

The referee gave several questions which we are capable of addressing, some that are already answered in the text (though perhaps not clearly enough), and a couple of misunderstandings (which again points to us needing to clarify our prose). The major objection I think we are more than capable of answering. I'll spend much of the next few days working on this, fixing certain problems, clarifying our text, and digesting the comments.

We've also gotten back comments on Dan's paper and we're almost ready to send it back too. It's a good time to be in our group with a few papers almost ready and a few more approaching initial submission.