Peer reviewing modelled

Decision making in scientific peer review unravelled with mathematical modelling

Overworked and stressed out? Look on the bright side.

Some stress is good for you

Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything

We are what we repeatedly do

Auger recombination the culprit

Auger recombination confirmed as being responsible for the LED droop phenomenon

LEDs go big on Si

Plessey has announced the commercial availability of GaN/Si LEDs manufactured using 6 inch GaN substrates

Feel to hear

Nickel based shape memory alloys are materials that ‘remember’ their cold-forged shape; returning to its pre-deformed shape when heated. Work is underway to use this technology to produce a Braille smartphone for the blind. The screen uses a  grid of alloy pins, which expand and contract sufficiently to be felt by the fingertips, and thus create Braille characters or letters as a touchable pattern

A fist full of neurons

According to a paper from Montclair State University, clenching your right hand may help form a stronger memory of an event or action, and clenching your left may help you recollect the memory later. Based on people memorising and recalling words from a list of 72 words, the findings suggest that some simple body movements, by temporarily changing the way the brain functions, can improve memory. Clenching the right fist may activate a brain region that is involved in storing memories, while squeezing the left hand may trigger an area dealing with retrieving information. So why don’t boxers never forget?

What, no Higgs?

Carl Hagen has recently joined in the discussion as to whether the Higgs Boson should be renamed in order to acknowledge the contributions of the co-workers. It may also be apposite to note that a maximum of three (living) individuals can be named as joint winners of a Nobel Prize. Six theorists are connected with developing the theory of the Higgs with five still living. Professor Hagen, one of this group, suggests that it be called the Standard Model Scalar Meson, or SM Squared. I personally like the suggestion to name it: The Particle (formerly known as Higgs). 

A good read?

The sale, for $6 million, of Francis Crick’s 1953 handwritten letter to his son describing the model for the structure of DNA is remarkable. Leaving aside the money element, the simplicity and clarity of the prose is truly beautiful. As an undergraduate I remember reading key papers written by Rutherford and Thomson on atomic physics and marvelling how comprehensible they made their ideas. I find that delving into the current, leading edge, scientific publications is sadly not so straightforward or enjoyable. Does the peer review process place sufficient emphasis on the notion that as well as scientific relevance someone might actually prefer to enjoy reading it?

Worth a look

0.16 mg per cubic centimetre

Gloves off?

Much to Mrs Grange’s delight, Wales thrashed England at rugby last month. The rugby world may want to learn a bit of tribology, courtesy of Sheffield University who have been measuring the dynamic friction between the ball, the skin and the fingerless gloves or mitts that some players wear. Most rugby balls are made with pimples on the surface to improve handling. In dry conditions with no mitts, balls with more closely spaced pimples were better for grip. But in wet or muddy conditions, the density of the pimples allowed a film of moisture to form between them, so when wet, a ball with wider pimple spacing is better. Synthetic leather mitts produced the best performance across all conditions as the imposed texture interlocked best with the pimples on the ball.

Still taking the tablets

Thailand plans to distribute about 1.7 million tablet computers to school students and teachers this year. They will be given to both primary and middle-school students, with 54,000 tablets going to teachers. The devices remain the property of the schools for three years, during which time the students can take them home daily, after which the students own them. 850,000 tablets were distributed last year and a further seven million are planned for next year. There will be an on-line tender for tablet suppliers.

Marvel at Young’s Modulus

In the film Spiderman 2 the comic book hero manages to stop a runaway New York City subway train with his webbing. Calculations by physics students at Leicester University based on the weight, speed and stopping distance of the film’s four fully loaded R160 subway cars have been used to derive the mechanical properties required for Peter Parker’s webbing. They found that the Young’s modulus, or stiffness, of the web would need to have been 3.12 gigapascals (GPa). This figure is indeed compatible with naturally occurring spider's silk, which ranges from 1.5 GPa to 12 GPa in the orb-weaver spiders (family Araneidae). No webinar is available but the full paper is on-line.

What Happens in an Internet Minute?

On the grand scale of life, the universe and everything a minute is only a moment in time but as Intel have pointed out due to the wonders of the internet and associated technologies a great deal can happen in that one fleeting minute. In 60 seconds more than 204 million emails are sent and over 1.3 million video clips are watched on YouTube. The figures will increase as currently the number of networked devices only equals the world’s population; by 2015 it is projected to be double the world’s population.

The speed and volume of communications is quantifiable and measurable. Style, on the other hand, is more qualitative. Perhaps totally anachronistic but I have to admire the Vatican’s use of coloured smoke as a communication mechanism on Papal matters. Twitter by smoke signals would be exciting but is probably a too retrograde ambition. But as the poet said: What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.

50 disruptive companies 2013

This is neither a quantitative assessment nor a ranking - but it is interesting.