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Home » Page 1210

Marco Antonio Raupp: priorities and challenges for Brazilian science

What is your top priority for science funding?

Broadly speaking, organized science in Brazil began about 50 years ago; that is, we have been doing science for a relatively short time. On the other hand, Brazil is a huge country with enormous challenges, many of which demand the contribution of science. Thus we not only have to “make ends meet”, but also meet the needs of basic research, and those of technological development and innovation.

Brazilian science has to be developed as a whole, implying that all areas of knowledge need funding. Of course, there are always specific priority needs, such as a few large research infrastructure projects. One such project is the construction of the Brazilian Multipurpose Reactor, which is designed to enhance the country’s capacity for producing radiopharmaceuticals and training people for nuclear research for peaceful uses. Another large project is the new Sirius synchrotron light ring, which will be among the largest in the world and let Brazil leap forward in materials research. A third project is to set up an ocean research institute, which includes buying a modern oceanographic research vessel. These projects will all be open to researchers from academia and industry.

How much is Brazil investing in research?

The most recent data available refer to 2011, when federal funding was R$17.8bn ($7.6bn) and state funding was R$8.6bn – totalling R$26.4bn of public investment in R&D. Companies, both public and private, spent R$23.6bn, bringing the overall total up to R$50bn. R&D spending in 2011 was 14.5% higher than the previous year, which in turn was 15.5% up on 2009. In fact, from 2000 to 2011 Brazilian investment in R&D quadrupled. Of course, we would like this growth to have been bigger, but considering the country’s general conditions and its needs in other vital areas such as basic education and health, R&D investments have been evolving satisfactorily.

What is the biggest challenge for Brazil’s scientific community?

Over the last 50 years – supported by public funding – the Brazilian scientific community set up and organized, starting from a very small base, a science and technology (S&T) system of considerable size and complexity. Brazil now has 235,000 active researchers and, according to the Scopus database, they published 53,083 scientific articles in international journals in 2012, amounting to 2.45% of the world’s total. In 1990, in contrast, they published just 3539 articles internationally, or 0.63% of the total. Meanwhile, in 2012, some 12,217 PhD students graduated – more than twice that of a decade earlier. As you can appreciate, these figures show a significant growth over a relatively short time and the challenge now is to improve the quality of those people to increase the impact of Brazil on world science. Another challenge is to enlarge the S&T system, which is today predominantly academic, so that it can reach the business sector. We have already learned to do S&T in universities and research institutes – we now need companies to also engage in R&D to enhance their competitiveness.

How are you improving the international impact of Brazilian research?

I believe this must come as the result of a sustained process – in other words, it is the evolution of the system as a whole that will result in greater international impact of Brazilian research. In this sense, one can see a series of developments under way, progressing year after year: number of PhD graduates; fellowships for Brazilian researchers to go abroad; foreign researchers in Brazil; publication of scientific articles by Brazilian researchers in international journals; and so on. An important recent step taken by the Brazilian government was to create the “Science without Borders” programme, which by 2015 will have offered 100,000 fellowships for Brazilian students and young researchers to go abroad. Brazilian research institutions are also increasingly incorporating an international dimension to their activities. In short, the Brazilian scientific community is aware of the need to deploy greater participation in the world science scene and has been acting accordingly.

How will you ensure research spending drives innovation and economic growth?

By sound government policy and the involvement of the scientific community. Until the second half of the 20th century, Brazilian S&T was generally confined to academia, mostly because industrial development between the 1950s and 1970s tended to rely on foreign technology, leaving no “cross talk” between S&T. Nevertheless, through the concerted effort of public companies and universities, Brazil managed to achieve some important technological results in strategic developmental areas, such as technologies for offshore oil and gas production, aircraft manufacturing, and a very competitive agribusiness.

There is now, though, a clear awareness that S&T makes a vigorous contribution to Brazil’s economic development. Towards this end, a legal framework is being built for science and technology, at the centre of which is the 2004 Innovation Law. Federal and state governments, meanwhile, have established a number of programmes for promoting and financing research, development and innovation activities.

At the same time, a new rapport is developing between industrial and S&T policies. This is officially reflected in the acknowledgment – embodied in President Dilma Rousseff’s government policies – that science, technology and innovation are the thrust of sustainable development, whether in economic, social or environmental terms. At the same time, our researchers and research institutions are fully aware of the importance of carrying out projects in partnership with private companies.

Pressures and constraints on Iranian research

“As a result of sanctions, we regret that unfortunately we are unable to handle your submission to this journal”. I imagine not many of you have ever encountered this message after sending one of your papers to a journal, but it has now become all too familiar for researchers in Iran. That is because since the start of 2013, the US has asked scientific publishers to help tighten trade sanctions on Iran. Most journals therefore are not dealing with manuscripts written by Iranian scientists, meaning rejection even before peer review.

Although some of the sanctions have recently being eased, this has had no effective impact on research yet. Two of my colleagues in the physics department at the University of Tehran, for example, who work in optical physics, have recently submitted their research papers to an established European journal. They are still waiting for a proper response. The editors claim that they cannot find a referee to evaluate their work, with some referees apparently even refusing to review the paper as the authors are Iranian. Yet while papers from Iran are being turned away, many Iranian researchers are still acting as journal editors and referees.

Even simple misinterpretations and misconceptions of the sanctions can be just as damaging. Companies sometimes extend the sanctions to where they are not actually applicable in order to avoid any sort of punishment in dealing with Iran. This means, for example, that experimental physicists in Iran are unable to equip their labs even with the simplest instruments and tools, given that the sanctions do not allow overseas companies to do business here.

Yet the sanctions are just one of many unpleasant obstacles facing the physics community – another is visa restrictions. International collaboration plays a crucial role in the growth of any scientific community, and Iran’s is no exception. But Iranian researchers face serious problems in obtaining visas for academic visits to other countries. Recent unnecessary measures adopted by foreign embassies in Iran in issuing visas for Iranian scientists, especially to physicists, have limited our contribution and participation in various scientific events, even those with aims that have nothing to do with technology or nuclear science.

In 2007, for example, I was supposed to participate in a workshop and summer school on statistical physics and conformal field theory in Melbourne, Australia, together with two colleagues from Sharif University of Technology. Unfortunately, we could not attend the school since the Australian embassy did not issue our visa. The only reason I can think of for the refusal was that we were physicists. Then in July last year I was expected to start a two-year Humboldt fellowship at the University of Cologne in Germany, but nearly a year later and I am still waiting for the German embassy in Tehran to issue the visa. Yet it will not be my first trip to the country as I had already been a postdoc at Cologne for a year in 2011 and spent another three months as a visitor there in 2012.

Are these restrictions not against the fundamental principles that scientists adhere to?

Even when researchers are granted a visa, the situation can be just as difficult. For Iranian physicists working and studying in the US, their visas are “single entry”, meaning they are forced to stay in the country for long periods – sometimes up to four or five years – without being able to visit their families or play an active role in promoting the physics community in Iran. In some cases, Iranian students who are attending a conference or workshop in the US or Europe are not even allowed to visit nearby laboratories or take part in specific activities and tutorial courses. Are these restrictions not against the fundamental principles of scientific and intellectual values that scientists adhere to?

Bouncing back

Despite all these pressures and constraints, the Iranian physics community has made substantial progress in research in the last couple of years, particularly in terms of the quality of papers published. According to Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science database, by the end of 2013, almost 29,000 papers in physics had been published in total by Iranian physicists, including some papers with several hundred citations and 70 papers with more than 100 citations each. From those 29,000 papers, more than 12,000 papers have been published between 2011 and 2013. This signals that Iranian science has a growing impact in physics.

Education, also, has improved. Women make up about 60% of the total number of undergraduate students in physics, filling 35% of PhD positions in various fields of research in physics. For the last two years, women have also made up around 60% of the participants at the Annual Physics Conference of Iran and currently women form 51% of the 10,000 or so members of the Iranian Physical Society. Taking all these facts into account, it seems obvious that imposing sanctions on science – apart from being an unprecedented action in the history of science – has not yet had a significant impact on Iran’s scientific progress but that is unlikely to remain the case.

I now urge scientific journals to stop their non-scientific policies regarding Iranian scientists and let science evolve as it should. We need to end these sanctions that do not allow our scientists to travel and I urge governments to reconsider their policies in order to facilitate and expedite their visa process for Iranian scientists and to offer more visas for our scientists. I hope that everyone realizes that these sanctions are damaging the capability and the future of Iranian research and I call on you to help with our cause.

Ultrathin material glides from metal to semiconductor

Researchers in Japan say they have watched individual atoms rearrange themselves during the semiconductor-to-metal phase transition in molybdenite (MoS2) – a graphene-like material that can occur in sheets just one molecule thick. Until now, such phase transitions were thought of as collective motions of atoms, but the new observations show that atom-by-atom movements are at play. The result could provide important information to researchers trying to create electronic devices from single sheets of MoS2.

Molybdenite is a direct bandgap 2D semiconductor that shows some promise for use in electronics and optoelectronics devices. The mobility of its electric charge carriers is greater than 100 cm2/Vs (and could be as high as 500 cm2/Vs) – values that compare well to silicon. It is a “van der Waals solid”, which means that it comprises robust 2D sheets weakly bonded to each other to form a layered 3D structure much like graphite. This means that molybdenite is stable on a variety of substrates – even transparent or plastic ones. Single-layer molybdenite is only about 0.65 nm thick, which means that it can be used to create very thin transistors.

An important property of molybdenite is polymorphism: it has different electronic characteristics depending on the crystal structure of the layers. It is a semiconductor when the sulphur and molybdenum are arranged in a trigonal prismatic structure and it is a metal when the atoms assume an octahedral structure. Both structural phases can be thought of as a central plane of molybdenum atoms sandwiched between two planes of sulphur atoms. Phase transitions were believed to occur when the planes glided over each other – but such a transformation had never been directly observed in an experiment until now.

Gliding atoms

Now, a team led by Kazu Suenaga at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba has shown that gliding atomic planes in molybdenite cause a new phase to nucleate in the material. Using a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM), the group has also spotted intermediate phases that occur during the transition.

The transition process can be triggered by the heat from the STEM electron beam. The electron-beam irradiation introduces a very small metallic domain in the semiconductor phase, which kick-starts the phase transition, explains Sureaga. This process could be used as a controllable way to induce phase transitions in molybdenite and similar ultrathin materials.

“Our result implies that electronic devices, such as nanodiodes, might be made ‘in-layer’ rather than via layer-by-layer bottom-up assembly of layers with distinct properties, which is the conventional way of going about such fabrication,” says Sureaga. “Making nanodevices using bottom-up processes is no easy task, but we show here that simple electron-beam patterning can introduce nanoscale domains with distinct metallic electronic properties within a single-layer semiconducting matrix. We can make the structures with atomic-scale precision and even monitor how the device grows in situ, thanks to observations in the STEM.”

Tiny metal triangle

Indeed, the researchers say that they have already produced prototypes of several nanodevices using their technique. For example, they made a serial junction of semiconductor and metal phases, which is to all intents and purposes a Schottky diode. They also managed to produce a local semiconductor region sandwiched between two metallic electrodes to form a nanoscale transistor. They have also created a tiny triangular-shaped region of metal within a semiconductor sheet of molybdenite (see image above) that can function as a quantum dot.

The research is described in Nature Nanotechnology 10.1038/nnano.2014.64.

Earth's cousin, alien intelligence, Galileo's game and more

Early last week, astronomers announced that they had found the first Earth-sized exoplanet that is comfortably within the habitable zone of its parent star, using NASA’s Kepler telescope. The new planet, dubbed Kepler-186f, is a close cousin of the Earth as it has a radius that is only 10% larger than that of the Earth, meaning that it could have liquid water on its surface, allowing for the tantalizing possibility of some form of life to exist upon it. At last count, Kepler has now discovered and confirmed 1706 exoplanets.

So it was rather interesting to come across two stories that looked at the implications of life beyond our planetary neighbourhood. Paul Gilster, who writes the Centauri Dreams blog had a rather interesting post on how artists and illustrators need to work with scientists to depict each new exoplanet, to make the images look visually stunning, while still being scientifically accurate. Gilster also talks specifically about the image (see above) that illustrates the newly found Kepler-186f.

The New Yorker’s science writer David Berreby instead ponders upon what exactly would constitute “intelligence” when it comes to a form of alien life that may be discovered. He talks about how it is easy to think of aliens that mimic humans in every way and looks at the merits of changing our perceptions and criteria for what makes up a measure of intelligence.

And once you have considered that deep and complex question, take a look at what may possibly be one of the earliest papers published on the notion of space–time and the ability to manipulate it. John Ptak, who writes the Ptak Science Books blog, came across a 1885 Nature paper that he says is “the most probable source for H G Wells’ earliest inspirational source for thinking that would result in such classics as The Time Machine”.

On a lighter note, in this amusing and informative article on the Wired website titled “Galileo got game: 5 things you didn’t know about the physics of basketball”, physicist and writer Aatish Bhatia takes a deeper look at some of the common moves that are used by basketball players, as well as explaining why sometimes a basketball is lighter than it is!

For some weekend browsing take a look at a new report that suggests physicists seem to be the most hard-working when it comes to research and teaching and see how to be an astrotourist in Chile. And then for some adventure, take a look at this new real-time Google Maps app called “HerdTracker” that follows the migration of wildebeest across the Serengeti and Masai Mara regions.

How Charles Wheatstone got to see polarization

By Matin Durrani

Things seem to have quietened down a bit following last month’s announcement by astronomers in the BICEP2 collaboration that they had obtained the first evidence of cosmic inflation – the period of rapid expansion in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. As you’ll know if you’ve been keeping up, the evidence was obtained by searching for certain “B-mode” polarizations in the cosmic microwave background, which are related to primordial gravitational waves that are thought to have abounded in the early universe. These polarizations differ from “E-mode” polarization, which describes how the magnitude of polarization varies across the CMB.

But never mind your fancy B-modes and E-modes, how well do you understand the concept of polarization in the first place? Intriguingly, in the late 1840s Sir Charles Wheatstone, who was then professor of experimental philosophy at the University of London, decided to create a mechanical device to explain the principles of the concept – several decades before James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic nature of light.

The video above shows a rare surviving example of one of these “Wheatstone Wave Machines”, which has been restored to working order by Robert Whitworth and colleagues at the University of Birmingham in the UK as part of their collection of historic physics instruments. Wheatstone designed the machine to visualize the wave nature of light and offer what Whitworth calls “a vivid insight into the theoretical concepts of wave motion”. At the time, there were other devices that showed the behaviour of travelling plane waves, but Wheatstone’s was different in that it was the first to demonstrate circularly polarized light.

(more…)

Hi-tech giants eschew corporate R&D, says report

“Think” has been motto of the US-based computer giant IBM since it was coined in the early 20th century by founder Thomas Watson. Many would argue that IBM has succeeded over the past 100 years because physicists and other scientists were given the freedom to think while working at the company’s research labs. And science has benefitted too, with three Nobel prizes won or shared by physicists working at the firm’s labs. Even more impressive is that a whopping seven physics Nobels have been awarded to physicists at Bell Labs – originally Bell Telephone Laboratories.

But the days of these corporate “idea factories” are over according to a new study published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP). Entitled Physics Entrepreneurship and Innovation (PDF), the 308-page report argues that many large businesses are closing in-house research facilities and instead buying in new expertise and technologies by acquiring hi-tech start-ups.

“Small start-ups have replaced corporate research centres as the drivers of American innovation,” explains report co-author and science historian Orville Butler.

Physicists interviewed for the study say that nearly all “blue-sky” research in the US is now done at universities and national labs rather than by companies. As a result, small companies that have spun out of academia or national labs are now providing the crucial links between industry and fundamental research.

The report is based on interviews with 140 physicists with PhDs who have founded or co-founded more than 90 companies across the US.  The firms are in a wide range of commercial sectors including medicine, tool-making, renewable energy, nanotechnology and optics. Some companies were founded in the 1980s, while others are less than a decade old.

While many companies are located in famous tech hotspots such as Silicon Valley or Boston, others have sprouted up in southern or mid-western states where both venture capital and hi-tech expertise can be in short supply.  Co-author Joe Anderson of the AIP points out that start-up success doesn’t necessarily hinge on being in an environment like Silicon Valley. “There is no one winning formula for a successful physics start-up,” he observes, adding “One of the deliberate things people try to do in the United States and abroad is to create another Silicon Valley, but it doesn’t always work.”

Not surprisingly, the two biggest challenges identified by interviewees are securing funding and commercializing their technologies. However, many also identified US immigration policies as a constant headache. Ron Reedy, a co-founder of Peregrine Semiconductor, described tight restrictions on foreigners working in the US as “the most self-inflicted, worthless, damaging policy the United States has”.

Arms export restrictions, which also apply to technologies that could be used in weapons systems, were also identified as a major barrier to success. Indeed, Reedy says that some companies have gone so far as to design such technologies outside of the US to ensure that they can be sold worldwide. Like current immigration policies, which encourage US-educated foreigners to return home rather than seek employment in the US, arms export restrictions are also leading to a drain of expertise from the US, says the report.

You can download a PDF of the report here.

Pivoting exoplanets could harbour life

Planets that pivot between different degrees of obliquity might be unexpected candidates for extraterrestrial life, according to researchers from the US. Kept in flux by the gravitational pull of nearby gas giants, these wobbling worlds periodically point their poles towards their host star, staving off a scenario where the exoplanet is frozen if it is at a considerable distance from its parent star.

Tilted shifts

In the past, researchers have detected Earth-sized exoplanets that have extremely inclined orbits, especially when compared with planets in our solar system. A combination of torque from the host star and the gravitational influence of a nearby gas giant causes the smaller exoplanets to wobble back and forth. These periodic shifts would drastically vary the axis of rotation of the exoplanet across geologically short timescales, and it was thought that such planets would be unsuitable for life to exist. Astrobiologists looking for habitable exoplanets study the region around a star in which terrestrial planets could support liquid water on their surfaces, known as the “habitability zone”, the size of which is usually determined by a number of variables such as the orbital radius, planetary mass and host-star brightness.

In the new work, a team led by John Armstrong from Weber State University studied whether such tilted worlds could also host life, thereby extending the habitable zone in such systems. The team simulated 17 hypothetical exoplanetary systems – each containing one Earth-like planet orbiting at 1 AU, and one or two gas giants.

Frozen worlds?

What the team’s simulations showed was that climate effects generated on these tilted planets might prevent them from being over-run by ice, even if those planets are somewhat far from their stars, falling outside of the normal habitable zone. Such a global-scale freezing scenario is normally thought to be assisted by the ice-albedo feedback, in which expanding, light-coloured glaciers increase the amount of heat reflected back to space, thereby bringing about further cooling.

“Rather than working against habitability, the rapid changes in the orientation of the planet could turn out to be a real boon sometimes,” says Armstrong. The team’s modelling showed that the feedback was suppressed because the periodic tilting of the poles towards the host star allowed greater levels of inbound radiation to reach the polar regions, melting the planet’s glaciers. Such bodies could therefore be almost twice as far from their star as the Earth is to the Sun, and still have liquid water on their surfaces.

Alien climates

“This work clearly demonstrates that as astronomers begin to detail the mechanics of planetary systems, we’re also getting our hands on vital clues to the workings of alien climates, and that magical thing we call ‘habitability’,” says Caleb Scharf, an astrobiologist at Columbia University, who was not involved in this study.

The researchers claim that their study has shown how “orbital architecture” is a crucial factor when assessing planetary habitability. With their initial simulations complete, Armstrong and colleagues are now looking to apply their model to known planetary systems to better assess their habitability, so that they can help identify planets worthy of being spectroscopically studied.

“Although it has long been thought that our planet presents a ‘Goldilocks scenario’ for life, it is becoming apparent that this belief might stem from a myopic view of what kinds of conditions life would thrive in,” says Dave Spiegel, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, who was also not involved in the new study. However, Spiegel cautions that “high obliquity might still pose a serious risk to complex, land-based life.” Planets with wildly varying tilts might experience extremely hot surface temperatures – of around 100 °C – on near-polar continents during periods of high obliquity, meaning that life might only exist in the oceans, where longer thermal timescales can buffer changing temperatures.

The research is described in Astrobiology.

      • Find out more about how astronomers hunt for exoplanets in the video below.

Patenting science

Does patenting impede scientific research?

Those who favour patenting say that protecting intellectual property helps advance science and technology by promoting risk-taking. A mechanism is generally needed, they say, to protect ownership of an invention while its ramifications are explored and financed. That mechanism is called a patent. Patents also help drive scientific and technical progress by discouraging trade secrets, making legal protection contingent on prompt disclosure of technical advances, and permitting free use of an invention once its patent has expired.

Those opposed to patents claim they block competition and are a nuisance. Patents can keep researchers from using a promising method and may inhibit research in fields where other scientists or engineers are known to hold patents. They can have a chilling effect by dampening the desire of scientists to enter areas of research where the situation is unclear.

In 1972 the US Supreme Court ruled that “products of nature” (such as genes and bacteria), natural laws (E = mc2 etc.) and abstract ideas (such as mathematical formulae) are “the basic tools of scientific and technological work that lie beyond the domain of patent protection”. Allowing patents on these things would threaten to “inhibit future innovation premised upon them”. This ruling affects only US law. But it was a grand claim for which the court offered no support; no references, say, to historians or philosophers of science. So was the court’s concern for research anchored in scientific practice or was it based on mythology?

Physics patents

Famous patent cases involving physics include the US physicist Glenn Seaborg’s patent on americium (US patent 3 156 523, filed 1946, issued 1964). His patent application, two pages long, is one of the shortest patent claims in history. The claim – covering “element 95” – has long expired. It did not, however, stop transuranic research, nor prevent americium from being incorporated into numerous industrial uses such as household smoke detectors.

In 1934 Leó Szilárd filed a British patent on a simple idea for a reactor, before the discovery of fission, but it was not issued. Ten years later, he and Enrico Fermi applied for another patent for a fission reactor, but its issue was delayed a decade due to secrecy (US Patent 2 708 656, filed 1944, issued 1955). The patent did not, however, impede reactor development. Nor has research involving lasers been impeded by patents.

Nicholas Christofilos’s patent of the “strong-focusing” principle, used to control beams in high-energy hadron colliders, is famous thanks to his eccentric personality and dramatic story. Christofilos was a US-born Greek electrical engineer who founded a lift-installation company in Athens and worked on particle-accelerator design in his spare time. In the late 1940s he sent a manuscript outlining the principle to what is now the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Berkeley’s accelerator experts pronounced his ideas unsound, pointing out that they violated Maxwell’s equations, among other things. Undeterred, Christofilos revised his idea, applied for US patents in 1949 and 1950 (US Patent 2 736 799, filed 1950, issued 1956), and sent another manuscript to Berkeley, which was thrown into a file without being read. So when Christofilos read of US physicists’ “discovery” of strong focusing in 1952, he borrowed money from a Greek law firm with contacts in Washington and left for the US to press his claim. Red-faced atomic-energy officials granted him $10 000 in exchange for the right to use the strong focusing principle.

In 1972 the US Supreme Court (in Gottschalk v. Benson) decided that a software algorithm for transforming one number into another number was an unpatentable abstraction, and began to express concern about patents inhibiting basic scientific research. More recently, the court has rejected claims for isolated DNA (as a product of nature) and medical diagnostic correlations relevant for deciding medical treatments (as a natural law).

But patent law, like science, is always on the move. In the upcoming Alice v. CLS Bank case – involving a patent claim for computer programs and systems to control credit risk by creating and managing escrow accounts – the court will reconsider what terms such as products of nature, natural law and abstractions mean.

The critical point

Historians, economists and lawyers argue that broad patents – whose claims are framed to make it hard for people to make technical improvements without infringement – have negatively affected the development of many new technologies, including the car and aeroplane. But has fundamental scientific research been hurt?

Legal scholars I know doubt it for three reasons. One is that, in practice, patents are not granted on broad scientific principles. Another is that scientists engaged in fundamental research are often oblivious to patents. A third reason is that people who hold patents often do not enforce them, or license them cheaply to, researchers. No lab scientist I’ve talked to has heard of colleagues receiving “cease and desist” orders.

Still, I think it’s possible that patents have negatively impacted fundamental research. One route might be through cost: budgets are a powerful force in experimental life, and manufacturers may charge more for patent-heavy equipment knowing that similar kit cannot be bought from other firms. Another possibility is self-censorship: scientists may avoid certain research because they fear patents might impede their ability to work, and lack the enthusiasm to do the required investigation.

Are these concerns real or imagined? Has fundamental research ever been retarded by patents? The answer is an empirical one involving actual scientific practice. If evidence exists, however, it is probably not found in documents, but rather in anecdotal information and informal discussions.

So let me ask you – do you know of cases where patents have kept anyone from conducting fundamental research? Please contact me at the e-mail address below and I’ll review the issue in a future column.

International performance mixed for UK physicists

The UK physics community leads the world in the quality of its scientific output, but its global share of papers published has declined in line with that of some other wealthy countries. That’s the conclusion of a new report entitled The UK’s Performance in Physics Research that was released yesterday by Science-Metrix, which compared the number and quality of physics research papers published by scientists based in the UK with those from other scientific powerhouses such as the US, Japan and Germany. The report also scrutinized the output of up-and-coming countries such as China, India and Korea.

The report was commissioned by the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World, along with two leading funding agencies in the UK: the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The good news for UK physics is that in 2009 the country had the highest “scientific impact” – in terms of papers cited in the three years following their publication – of the 10 most prolific publishing nations. Indeed, between 2002 and 2009, the UK’s scientific impact increased at an annual rate of about 1%. Just behind the UK in terms of impact are the US and Germany, with the US experiencing a steady decline from 2002, when it led the pack.

Drop in output

The study, however, finds that the UK’s share of the global output of physics papers fell from 5.1% in 2002 to 4.0% in 2012 – a decline mirrored by other advanced countries such as France, Germany and the US. This fall is attributed to a significant increase in output from emerging scientific countries, such as China and India. This steady growth in papers from these two nations does not, however, appear to coincide with a drop in the quality of research being done there, according to the report. Instead, the scientific impact of physics done in China and India has increased steadily since 2002 – albeit from relatively low levels.

The report also compares how physicists around the world participate in international collaborations. The study reveals that the number of collaborations involving UK physicists has grown at an annual rate of 1.8% between 2002 and 2011, with about 65% of papers by a UK-based physicist also having a co-author located abroad in 2011. This is nearly 15% greater than the overall figure for all UK academic disciplines. Not surprisingly, the US is home to the largest number of physicists that collaborate with scientists in the UK. Indeed, 24% of all UK collaborations involve US physicists, followed by Germany, France and Italy with 10%, 8% and 7%, respectively.

Perhaps worryingly for the UK physics community, the overall amount of physics done in the UK seems to be in decline. In 2011 the UK had the lowest number of physics papers as a proportion of the total national academic output of 25 leading countries. Furthermore, the annual growth in the number of physics papers published in the UK between 2002 and 2011 was 1.2%, which is much lower than the 2.1% growth in all UK academic papers.

Economic impact

The report goes beyond publishing data and looks at the economic impact of four sub-disciplines in which UK physicists excel: applied superconductivity and materials science; astrophysics and space science; cosmology, quantum field theory and particle physics; and imaging techniques and algorithms. The creation of spin-out companies, technology transfer to large computing and aerospace companies, and the development of new medical technologies are cited as some of the benefits of having expertise in these four areas.

Frances Saunders, president of the IOP, says that “the UK remains world leading in physics”. However, she adds that the dramatic growth of physics in nations such as China and India should serve as a warning to UK physicists. “The lead is ours to lose without internationally competitive levels of investment,” she says.

The report can be downloaded at http://www.iop.org/publications/iop/2014/page_63080.html.

Physicists create frictionless flow by adding more friction

Friction in one part of a system can be reduced by boosting friction elsewhere. That is the curious and counterintuitive conclusion of Yasinul Karim and Eric Corwin of the University of Oregon in the US. The physicists made the discovery in a simple experiment involving coins moving on a walled conveyor belt. They showed that friction between the conveyor belt and the coins could completely remove the friction between the coins and the walls.

Karim and Corwin believe that their findings could be developed to improve how belts transport granular materials in industries as varied as coal mining and pharmaceutical manufacture. A scientist not involved in the work suggests that the strange phenomenon could have wider applicability in simulating the effects of gravity and even traffic management.

Friction carries the weight

In a container filled with a liquid, the downward force of the liquid on the base increases linearly with the height of the liquid. However, granular materials exhibit a phenomenon called the Janssen effect, where the friction between the material and the container allows the edges of the container to bear some of that weight. As the height of the material in the container rises, the increase in the force on the base becomes more gradual, until eventually adding more material to the container causes no change.

Now, the two Oregon physicists have turned the problem on its side, spreading out coins on a conveyor belt and confining them with two walls parallel to the direction of motion and a wall at the downstream end of the belt (see figure). “Gravity” is simulated by turning the conveyor belt on and pushing the coins towards the downstream wall. A sensor monitors the change in force on this wall as more coins are added to the belt.

Liquid currency

Surprisingly, the force measured increased linearly with the number of coins added, showing that, unlike in the vertical situation, the granular system behaves exactly like a liquid. Karim and Corwin propose that the friction between the belt and the coins causes the coins to vibrate. This vibration removes the friction between the coins and the sidewalls, thus preventing the sidewalls from bearing any forward force. All the force on the coins is therefore transferred directly to the downstream wall. Corwin offers an analogy: “If you take a brick, put it on a plank of wood and hold it at a certain angle, the brick won’t slide down because there’s friction between the brick and the wood. But if you bang on the wood or shake it, you will allow the brick to start sliding down.” Paradoxically, the presence of one sort of friction eliminates another.

The researchers found that if they added a sawtooth pattern to the walls that interlocked with the coins at the edges, then this macroscopic friction was not removed by vibration and they observed a type of Janssen effect, with the increase in downstream force levelling off as more coins were added.

Improved conveyor control

While the research is unlikely to be of much practical use – conveyor belts do not usually end at a wall – Karim and Corwin plan to look at dynamic situations in which items are moving on the belt. They hope this will provide insights into controlling and stopping objects in an efficient manner that does not apply excessive force and damage either the items or the belt.

John Wambaugh of the Environmental Protection Agency likes the paper’s demonstration of the Janssen effect in a model where gravity can be turned off. “If you’re on Earth, you’re always asking the question ‘What role does gravity play?’ but it’s very hard to switch gravity off and on,” he says. “Their system is an elegant way to simulate gravity in 2D.” Beyond this, he suggests that the ideas might be useful in other areas. “Traffic flow is basically a granular system,” he says. “Of course, gravity’s not operating in the same way, but you could certainly see how insights from a similar system might have a lot of impact on things people deal with every day.”

The research will be published in a forthcoming issue of Physical Review Letters.

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