Monday 11 March 2024
Thought for the month
“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
― Nikola Tesla
Sunday 7 January 2024
Ending my 40 year career in scientific instrumentation
RTA Instruments Ltd closed its doors at the end of 2023, after 20+ years of successful thin-film metrology sales working with k-Space Associates, Inc. and other principals in Europe.
News from k-Space 18 December 2023
"Richard Thomson, the founder of RTA, along with his colleagues, Dr Jeff Harris, Dr Carl Richardson, Dr John Grange and Dr Jeevan Dosanjh, were instrumental in helping grow k-Space’s thin-film metrology business across Europe. RTA’s sales skills and deep knowledge of thin-film deposition and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) led to their immense success. Their work helped establish the kSA 400, kSA BandiT, and the kSA MOS as industry standards".
Tuesday 15 March 2022
Thursday 2 December 2021
Publish and be ...
The publisher Springer
Nature has retracted over 40 papers from its Arabian
Journal of Geosciences. One of the notices succinctly states: The
Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher have retracted this article because the
content of this article is nonsensical. Why would anyone doubt such
scholarly works as: “Simulation of sea surface temperature based on
non-sampling error and psychological intervention of music education”; or even
“Distribution of earthquake activity in mountain area based on embedded system
and physical fitness detection of basketball”?
Monday 22 November 2021
Men from Mars and Penguins from Venus?
Earlier this year we had the saga of phosphine gas indicating life on Venus. Possibly, perhaps and finally not even there. Now we have the Daily Star, that doyen of scientific journals, suggesting that penguins might be extra-terrestrials due to phosphine being detected in their guano. Never mind phosphine, perhaps we have a surfeit of nitrous oxide.
Earlier this year we had the saga of phosphine gas indicating life on Venus. Possibly, perhaps and finally not even there. Now we have the Daily Star, that doyen of scientific journals, suggesting that penguins might be extra-terrestrials due to phosphine being detected in their guano. Never mind phosphine, perhaps we have a surfeit of nitrous oxide.
Monday 15 November 2021
North and South
Analysis of the backgrounds of over 1,000 authors involved in the 100 most cited climate change research papers from 2016-2020 found that 90% of these scientists were affiliated with academic institutions from North America, Europe or Australia. Fewer than 1% of the authors were based in Africa, while only 12 of the papers had a female lead researcher. The worry being that this lack of diversity creates blind spots to the needs of some of the most vulnerable people to climate change.
Analysis of the backgrounds of over 1,000 authors involved in the 100 most cited climate change research papers from 2016-2020 found that 90% of these scientists were affiliated with academic institutions from North America, Europe or Australia. Fewer than 1% of the authors were based in Africa, while only 12 of the papers had a female lead researcher. The worry being that this lack of diversity creates blind spots to the needs of some of the most vulnerable people to climate change.
Monday 8 November 2021
Do conversations end when people want them to?
A Harvard study earlier this year found conversations tend to go on for too long because people are too polite to end them. Adam Mastroianni, who led the study, explained there is generally a “coordination failure” about when to end conversations. “People feel like it’s a social rupture to say, ‘I’m ready to go’… Because of that, we are skilled at not broadcasting that information.”
A Harvard study earlier this year found conversations tend to go on for too long because people are too polite to end them. Adam Mastroianni, who led the study, explained there is generally a “coordination failure” about when to end conversations. “People feel like it’s a social rupture to say, ‘I’m ready to go’… Because of that, we are skilled at not broadcasting that information.”
Monday 1 November 2021
Wednesday 20 October 2021
Monday 18 October 2021
Friday 15 October 2021
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