Meet the NanoPutians

It’s amazing what you can do with synthetic chemistry.

Synthesis of Anthropomorphic Molecules: The NanoPutians
Stephanie H. Chanteau and James M. Tour

Described here are the synthetic details en route to an array of 2-nm-tall anthropomorphic molecules in monomeric, dimeric, and polymeric form. These anthropomorphic figures are called, as a class, NanoPutians. Using tools of chemical synthesis, the ultimate in designed miniaturization can be attained while preparing the most widely recognized structures: those that resemble humans.

J. Org. Chem., 68, 8750 (2003)

You can even have a whole chain of them:

The full experimental details are at the end of the paper, in case you want to make your own.

Spot the error!

Someone needs some basic mathematics lessons:

From this article in Today – ‘Fuel subsidy not the way, still…”:

“As a result, prices at the pump will almost double from the current RM1.92 a litre to RM2.70…”

Can you identify the problem with the above sentence?

Ironically, the answer can be found in another article later on – ‘M’sian petrol prices leap 40%’.

Why it’s bad (and irresponsible) reporting:

What would the casual reader remember – ‘almost double’, or the actual numbers?

Are you an idler?

This article on CNA today has the AAS providing tips for motorists on how to save fuel costs; eg regular servicing, load lightening, etc.

And yet, they don’t mention the biggest no-brainer of them all – Don’t let your engine idle for too long.

Idling cars are a common sight on the roads here: trucks doing deliveries, taxis waiting for passengers, parents waiting for their kids. How much fuel gets wasted in the process? An oft-quoted rule of thumb is that idling consumes about 3-4 litres per hour. Fuel prices are now around $2.2 per litre, which means that if you let your car idle for 10 minutes, you just threw away approximately a dollar’s worth of fuel. Repeat this five times a week, and you’re looking at maybe $20 a month.

It’s not just fuel costs either – less idling means cleaner air, and at least two countries, the US and Canada, have anti-idling laws for this reason.

So turn that engine off!

Failure analysis can be fun

There’s a tool for everything.

Mechanical Coital Model
“Male condoms that break in use do so mostly by a “blunt puncture” mechanism“, White et al, Contraception 77, 360 ( 2008 ), doi:10.1016/j.contraception.2008.01.014

(via Nature)

Read what you write!

Until context-sensitive spellcheckers become a mainstay of word processing programs, it often pays to read through any written article before submission:

Plank’s Constant: Probably the most misspelled term in physics, leading to generations of confused undergrads wondering about the link between carpentry and quantum mechanics.

Hardon: Already a Bad Science classic!

Atomic Farce Microscopy: No, really, we’re getting atomic resolution, even if the whole thing’s suspended on bungee cords. Yeah, sure.

Currant source: Why else would you lick a 9 volt battery? Ribena, mmmm!

Contact Angel: How many of them can dance on the surface of a water droplet?

Nonofabrication: The new Zen technique of making structures so small you wonder if they even exist.

Twelve ways of making your FYP supervisor happy

Remember, happy supervisors generally also mean good grades.

1. The evening before a presentation is not the time to start working on it.
2. Neither can you write a coherent thesis in one night.
3. If you absolutely have to use Excel, at least learn how to scale and reformat your axes, and how to get rid of that grey background . What Excel thinks is the best scale may not be the best one for conveying the significance of your data.
4. Images from scientific instruments (AFM, SEM, whatever) are often high resolution, which means big file sizes. Compress, cut or use lower resolution images for your reports and presentations! Even though we have PhDs, our paychecks aren’t that high, so we have old pokey computers that will choke on your 50 Mbyte ppts/docs. Assuming we manage to get the files through our low-speed connection in the first place.
5. If you cite Wikipedia as a source, we will automatically fail you.
6. If you copy stuff from Wikipedia, we will make you eat your thesis. Without ketchup or chilli.
7. You do not have to report EVERY successful experiment that you did. We will fall asleep after seeing an optical lithography dose test for the 100th time.
8. Similarly, you do not have to report EVERY failed experiment that you did. Really, we don’t care to hear how you dropped your sample face down onto the dirty carpet, and how efforts to remove the fluff led to your sample looking like a badly scratched cat toy.
9. In the same vein, please please please do not put all 200+ pages of code in your presentation slides. Nothing turns your audience off more than seeing “Slide 1 of 256″ at the corner of the screen. We’re not going to type in your code to check that it works, neither are we going to read it to find out what exactly your program is intended to do.
10. Your presentation is not an opportunity to show off your Powerpoint WordArt or animation skills. Not only are they distracting, but we would be wondering what you’re trying to hide behind all that flashiness.
11. End your presentation on a slide listing all your conclusions, so that your examiners can ponder over them. We are not impressed by fancy “Thank You” or “Q&A” slides, or slides with pictures of yourself posing in the lab.
12. Practice your oral presentation. Then practice it again. And again. If there are any words you can’t pronounce or spell, ASK! It is hard for us to suppress our laughter when you measure lengths in Armstrongs, or magnetic field strengths in Oysters.

A tale of two cities…

Which looks more like a place where serious and meaningful research gets done?

Death of a turbo

Chad Orzel at Uncertain Principles currently has a nice post up on vacuum pumps – equipment that’s pretty much essential for anyone doing any kind of nanofabrication or materials characterisation work. Coincidentally, someone in the lab hauled out a turbopump today so we had an opportunity to take some photos.

Though, of course, you really, really never want to see turbopumps in this state.

Here’s a view through the top connecting flange of the turbo. Normally, you should see quite nice, regular, closely-spaced blades arranged around a central shaft, much like the turbines of a jet engine. Obviously that’s not quite the case here – this is a turbopump that’s just gone through a rather catastrophic failure, possibly arising because of some small object, a wafer fragment say, dropping right into it. There’s usually a safety mesh placed over the turbo opening to prevent such occurrences from happening, but sometimes holes get ripped in it.

A large turbopump like this usually has its turbines spinning around 3000 rpm or so – about 50 times per second. That’s pretty darned fast, and when something gets in the way of something with this much angular momentum, well, bad things happen. Like turbine blades jamming and then shearing off:

A turbopump typically contains a series of rotors; each one compressing and driving gas towards the outlet leading to a backing pump. Here, about two or three levels down, the rotor itself has been thrown off axis:

Did I mention that these guys can cost SGD$100,000 or more?

A*STAR’s Star Challenge Updates and White Paper

It looks like the deadline for the competition registration has been extended; originally February 29th, now, registration closes on March 31st. Perhaps they couldn’t find enough good teams to make this an exciting show?

But never mind that. More details of the search tasks are now available in a recently released white paper. There are two broad categories, each with three subtasks:

Audio (Voice) search tasks:

• Search by International Phonetic Alphabet
• Search by voice example (of a given word/phrase/sentence)
• Search for recurrent voice segments

Video search tasks:

• Search by a single query image
• Search by video shot
• Scene/event categorization

The initial knockout and subsequent qualifying rounds will consist of some combination of the above tasks, on various databases, both monolingual and multilingual.

The preliminary schedule is given in the white paper as well. A summary:

• Registration deadline: March 31
• 1st knockout round: May 4-15
• 2nd knockout round: June 4-20
• 3rd knockout round: July 4-20
• Qualifying race: August 20-23
• Grand final: October 23

Since it’s already been stated that the grand final will take place during Fusionopolis opening week, we now know when the official opening of Fusionopolis will be taking place as well (assuming the schedule has been fixed). Mark your calendars!

A*STAR/NTU Visiting Science Writer-in-Residence Programme

Last week at the 2008 AAAS meeting, A*STAR announced an upcoming programme to host two science journalists in Singapore as writers-in-residence. Round-trip travel and living expenses for up to four weeks will be sponsored jointly by A*STAR and NTU’s School of Communication and Information.

More information about the program can be found here at the A*STAR website.

While I think it’s great that the need for good science journalism has been recognised, I have my reservations about how successful this program will be.

First, anecdotal evidence shows that while Singaporean agencies and institutions like to talk big, when push comes to shove, they’ll rather stay within their comfort zones, following the trail of others instead of blazing their own. Here’s a quote, from the website, about science communication in Singapore:

In 2006, The Straits Times, Singapore’s English language broadsheet newspaper, launched a two-page weekly section that is dedicated to science.

Two pages per week in a broadsheet. Starting in 2006. When we’re well in the age of Web 2.0 and all. Erm, hello Upper Management, has the Internet revolution passed you by? And no, putting a pdf copy of some printed text doesn’t count.

(Actually, it might not be all so bad. I hear that Explosion is going to be revamped and moved to an online platform sometime this year. It could be good, or it could end up like Stomp. Oh dear.)

Anyhow, back to the topic of the Writer-in-Residence program – now, given the Singaporean propensity to stick to all things traditional, will the selection process for this program be biased towards old school science journalists, or will the relevant agencies have the foresight to select someone willing and able to embrace the future?

A second reservation about the program: Singapore doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to acknowledging and accepting criticism, particularly foreign ones. Given that the announcement of the Writer-in Residence program was made in Boston during the AAAS meeting, it’s pretty evident that the program organisers are looking to invite international science journalists. Now, while they have “no obligation to write on Singapore”, to what extent will they be able to comment on the scientific scene here?

Criticism is important to science – not just the technical, rigorous criticism of peer review, but also the criticism and questioning of why particular lines of research are being pursued. We’re no longer in a time when science is considered an ivory-tower hobby for aristocrats and academics; instead, science policy in this day and age is largely shaped by economic and military needs. An effective science journalist today needs to be able to show the relevance of any scientific enterprise to the general populace – they are, after all, taxpayers funding our research. And in commenting on a country’s science policy, it is almost inevitable that the country’s domestic and foreign policies be put under critical scrutiny as well.

A healthy scientific research program needs a healthy policy of science communication as well. It won’t do anyone any good if all we have are merely cheerleading and “see-how-cool-our-RIs-are” stories in the broadsheets. We need journalists who can do more than just translate jargon into plain English – we need journalists who are good educators as well, to promote a strong culture of scientific literacy and awareness among the populace.