Some materials links

Invisible electronics.

To create their thin-film transistors, [Tobin J. ] Marks’ group [at Northwestern] combined films of the inorganic semiconductor indium oxide with a multilayer of self-assembling organic molecules that provides superior insulating properties.

Synthetic Gecko materials that mimics “microscopic hairs on a gecko foot”. It is “made of layers covered with thousands of stalks with splayed [...]

Nano-knives and superplastic nanotubes

First, the nano-knife (via slashdot):

A prototype microtome knife for cutting ~100 nm thick slices of frozen-hydrated biological samples has been constructed using multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). A piezoelectric-based 3-D manipulator was used inside a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) to select and position individual MWCNTs, which were subsequently welded in place using [...]

Kinship with the cosmos

Are you in the mood for something truly inspiring, exciting and, um, spiritual? If not, why, you really ought to be! If yes, watch this short video of a speech by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Awesome!

Different meanings of the word ‘replicate’

In the rough-and-tumble world of science, disputes are usually settled in time, as a convergence of evidence accumulates in favor of one hypothesis over another. Until now.

On April 10 economist John R. Lott, Jr., formerly of the American Enterprise Institute, filed a defamation lawsuit against economist Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago and [...]

The Oscars of Indian Science: 2006 Edition

Yes, the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar (SSB) Prizes have been announced for the year 2006. As I said in my post last year, the SSB Prizes are the most prestigeous in India because (a) they represent peer recognition, and (b) they are rare (just one or two in each field). They do come with some [...]

BMQ

A quick note to tell you — particularly those of you in Bangalore — about the Bangalore Materials Quiz (BMQ), an annual event organized by us for the students of Classes XI and XII. As the name suggests, BMQ covers all aspects of materials: their physics, chemistry, production, processing, properties (mechanical, thermal, electrical, magnetic, optical, [...]

Manhattan Project in energy saving technologies

Wired has an article (with links) about on-going research in energy-saving technologies in MIT. Check this one out!
The research is applying new materials, new technologies and new ideas to radically improve an old concept — thermophotovoltaic (TPV) conversion of light into electricity. Rather than using the engine to turn a generator or alternator in [...]

An explosive commentary on the status of women in science

When I was 14 years old, I had an unusually talented maths teacher. One day after school, I excitedly pointed him out to my mother. To my amazement, she looked at him with shock and said with disgust: “You never told me that he wasblack”. I looked over at my teacher and, for the first [...]

Nikola Tesla

Couturnix has a great post — no, make that an absolutely great post — on Nikola Tesla in celebration of the latter’s 150th birthday on July 10. You’ve got to check out that post to see why I’m amazed …

Still, at least the first two commenters on that post were left rather underwhelmed by Couturnix’s [...]

Los Alamos

It has been quite a while since I noted the Los Alamos scientists’ revolt (through a blog!) that forced the then director to resign. The Economist updates us on what’s happening at Los Alamos.

… At the beginning of June the University of California, which had run Los Alamos since the days of the Manhattan Project, [...]

Nature’s experiment with ‘open’ peer review

Nature, a leading science journal, is conducting an interesting experiment wherein a paper’s authors can have it reviewed ‘openly’ — like comments in a blog! This would be in addition to the regular (anonymous) review process.

While I haven’t given it much thought, others have. Arunn Narasimhan (Mechanical Engineering, IIT-Madras) has a link-ful post examining [...]

Nanotech research in India

[Even] with the NSTI [the Nano Science and Technology Initiative] in place, the level of funding has been sub-critical as compared to China with which India inevitably tends to be compared. In 2002, for example, compared to China’s $200 million, India spent a mere Rs.15 crores. Over the four and a half years of [...]

Sociophysics

After writing this post about economics, physics and econophysics, I was poking around the web, looking for Philip Ball’s articles. Ball is the author of the piece that I linked to in my post, and has written quite enthusiastically about “sociophysics” which seems, to me, to be mostly simulations in which independent entities (particles, [...]

Is Economics the ‘New’ Physics?

For a long time, physicists have had a reputation for boldly venturing into other disciplines. Indeed, in a recent Physics Today article recounting the history of physics since 1931, Spencer Weart specifically mentions the rise of ‘hyphenated physics’ (bio-physics, geo-physics, etc) during this period as a key development.

The natives of the other disciplines, of course, [...]

Papers retracted by chemistry professor: an update

Remember this post from three months ago? Now, we have an update by Kenneth Chang in the NYTimes. Prof. Dalibor Sames, the Columbia University professor of chemistry, who retracted two papers in March has now retracted four more papers. These papers were published in 2002 and 2003, and Sames was the lead author in all [...]