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Home » Page 1532

Scientists in the newsroom

Have you ever squirmed when reading coverage of science news in the media? Rolled your eyes when you saw a headline summing up a sophisticated science result in one line? Do you ever come to the conclusion that some complex subject matter has been condensed to the point where it may collapse in on itself, forming a mini black hole that will trap the real scientific understanding forever? And most importantly, have you ever asked why things might be like this, and what you could do about it?

I had the chance to find out in 2005, when I was awarded a media fellowship from what is now known as the British Science Association. These fellowships were set up about 20 years ago with the aim of introducing career scientists and engineers to the way that the media work. The core of the fellowship is the opportunity to work as a science journalist in the national press, broadcast or Internet media for three to eight weeks. In my case, I spent a month working for the Times Higher Education Supplement in London and another week reporting for them from the British Science Festival. At the time I was in the final year of a PhD in shock and explosives physics at the University of Cambridge, so doing the fellowship meant quite a significant change of scene. However, I wanted to do it because I was curious about the inner workings of news stories, and fascinated by how different parts of society communicate with each other.

Learning the ropes

My time in the newsroom was fun because I was not there to observe, I was there to do. I was trusted with stories to research and people to interview, and I discovered how hard it is to balance your own interest in a subject with the time you have available to report on it. One of the biggest projects I worked on involved analysing academic salary data released under the Freedom of Information Act. That effort turned into a rewarding front-page story, but I learned an extra lesson when a letter arrived complaining about my choice of data displayed with the story. “Why didn’t you include my institution?” asked the letter-writer.

My first reaction was one of amazement: even though it was the week’s top story, I did not think anyone would read my article closely enough to spot that they had been excluded. Note to self: someone out there is paying attention. Then I had to work out how to say, politely, that “I could only fit a limited number of institutions into the space allowed, and I didn’t think yours was important enough to make that list”. If I ever do it again, I will make sure that the listed institutions come from a hierarchy based on published data, so I can give a better answer to that question.

The real benefits of the placement came from just being in the newsroom, hearing how stories are chosen and seeing the near-panic that dominated the hours before the publication was “put to bed”. The biggest single message I absorbed was that it is the editor’s job to produce a publication that will sell. Someone can write an amazingly well-researched and thorough story but if the editor judges that “the reader” is likely to ignore it, it will not go in.

In my experience, science journalists are intelligent people who are genuinely doing their best to convey the excitement and importance of science to people who are not necessarily already convinced. And they really do know a lot about how to get the maximum amount of accurate science into their stories without turning people off. But newspapers and websites are up against a weird kind of democracy: anyone who buys a paper or logs onto a site is free to stop reading at any time. If the first paragraph does not catch the reader’s attention, what comes next could be Pulitzer-prize-winning stuff but no one will ever know.

So if you are ever interviewed by a journalist, bear in mind that they are there to help you get your message out, because (be honest) you could not do it by yourself. What they write is not intended for you; it is intended for your next-door neighbour, who may well think that Wolfgang Pauli was the guy who won the gold medal on the pommel horse at the last Olympics. Science journalism is not perfect, but once you see what motivates it, you can see that there is a lot more that we as scientists can do to improve the message that the public receives about science.

Read all about it

If you are interested in taking on a fellowship, you will need to be adaptable and a good communicator. You will also need to be prepared to learn to do things that you might not be naturally good at. In my case, this included writing about other people’s research without filling the piece with quotes (because I wanted to use the researchers’ own words) and also structuring an article as a journalist would, rather than as a scientist would.

As for the timing of the fellowship, most of the other fellows in my year were postdocs or researchers (both academic and industrial), and I think they probably appreciated the fellowship more than I did because they had a few more years’ experience of how research works. The more established you are, the more you can make use of your know-how; in particular, your peers are more likely to ask your advice if you have built a reputation as someone who is willing to help fellow scientists navigate the media. It also helps to keep in regular contact with friends and journalists whose aims are the same as your own. Moving about a lot (as is common for a few years after finishing a PhD) can make those contacts harder to maintain.

The flip side is that media fellowships take up a significant chunk of fellows’ time — about 10% over the course of a year — and it may be easier to fit this in while studying for a PhD. Either way, you will need a sympathetic employer who is prepared to let you take the time off. If you are concerned about missing that time at work, remember that a month or two off will make no difference when you look back in 10 years’ time, but a month or two spent in someone else’s shoes will be memorable and useful for life.

Since the fellowship ended I have finished my PhD, shifted my research focus (I now apply what I learned about high-speed photography during my PhD to the study of ocean bubbles) and I am on my second postdoc position in my new field. In that time, I have helped other scientists in their interactions with the press and I have also become much better at publicizing science events that I have been involved in, including the science video website SciVee. But the main effect of the fellowship was more a change in how I see the world. I am far more aware that scientists need to take the media seriously, and now that I am settled in the field of ocean science, where communicating research results to the public is essential if we are to stop treating the oceans as though they are infinite, I am looking forward to making use of that new understanding.

The next round of fellowships will be in the summer of 2010, with applications due by March 2010. More details are available online at the British Science Association’s website (www.britishscienceassociation.org), including lots of information about the scheme and reports written by previous fellows about their experiences. Being a media fellow could be one of the best things that will happen to you in 2010. You are sure to view science reporting in a new light and what you learn will be invaluable if you ever find yourself on the other end of the microphone. Who knows, you might even have a ringside seat for the science scoop of the decade.

Plasmonics scores smoothness bull’s eye

Bull's eye for plasmonics
Bull’s eye for plasmonics

A technique for producing extremely smooth patterns has doubled the distance that surface plasmons can travel on metal films, according to researchers in the US. The “template stripping” approach also simplifies how the films are made, and relies largely on inexpensive silicon wafers and adhesives, claims the team. The research could lead to a practical way of manufacturing new types of solar cells and other “plasmonic” devices that exploit interactions between light and electrons.

Surface plasmons propagate on the surface of a metal as collective oscillations of electrons — and they can interact strongly with light. When light strikes a flat metal surface at right angles it will not excite plasmons, but creating patterns on the surface allows this excitation, as long as the pattern dimensions are smaller than the wavelength of the light.

Unfortunately, plasmons are also scattered and absorbed by irregular bumps on a surface, reducing the effectiveness of roughly-hewn plasmonic devices. Techniques traditionally used to fabricate nanostructures — which can involve painstakingly carving out patterns with an ion beam — produce surfaces that are too uneven. Ions implanted as a side-effect of this technique also lead to plasmon absorption.

Serendipity strikes

Now David Norris and colleagues at the University of Minnesota have developed a method that deposits copper, gold or silver onto a patterned silicon template wafer. They then apply an adhesive to the imprinted metal, and pull the metal and adhesive together away from the silicon to create an extremely smooth yet patterned surface.

“This template stripping method is very well known in scanning tunneling microscopy and self-assembled monolayers,” Norris told physics world.com. Indeed, he admits that he hadn’t come across template stripping until attending a talk given as part of a PhD thesis defence, which mentioned that it could be used to make ultra-flat gold. “We kept thinking we would find an old paper where somebody had already done this,” he said. “What we found was, instead of just peeling it off, people in the plasmonic community would completely etch away the silicon.”

Reusable templates

Minnesota PhD students Prashant Nagpal and Nathan Lindquist turned silicon wafers into templates that they have been able to re-use up to 30 times. They made the templates with the same kind of ion beam techniques that proved problematic when carving metal. The template approach means that any plasmon-absorbing ions stay in the silicon wafer, and are not transferred to the metal films that are then deposited onto it.

Nagpal and Lindquist made silver bull’s eyes, gold pyramids, triangular grooves and nanohole arrays using this method. “The first time we saw them, we were pretty excited,” Norris said. “They were beautiful.”

To test how good its surfaces were at conveying plasmons, the team produced a 200 nm thick grooved silver film, and cut slits in it with ion beams. Shining light through these slits from the adhesive side caused plasmons to move across the metal, until they hit the grooves and scattered light.

Measuring the intensity of the scattered light across films with varying distances between grooves allowed Norris and his colleagues to calculate how far plasmons were propagating. They found that their propagation lengths were close to the theoretical maximum. The plasmons travelled for more than 10 µm, far in excess of the 4 and 5 µm lengths recorded in the best previous studies.

Niek van Hulst of the Institute of Photonic Science in Barcelona, Spain, points out that even this improved propagation length demonstrates the fundamental difficulties of trying to achieve long-range plasmon transport. He says that although other groups had already investigated the impact that template stripping can have on plasmons, the Minnesota researchers have made “a nice advance in fabrication methodology”.

Norris’s team will now seek to apply its approach to applications that exploit plasmonics. In particular gold and silver films can be used to improve molecular and biological sensing in a method known as surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. “Many groups have demonstrated it,” explained team member Sang-Hyun Oh, “but what’s missing is a reproducible technique. Our method has the chance to address that problem.”

This research appears in the latest edition of Science.

Film review: Eyes on the Skies

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Image of the European Very Large Telescope credit ESO/Y Beletsky

If the telescope had never been invented, the known universe would consist of six planets, one moon, and a few thousand stars. It’s therefore fitting that one of the “official” products of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009 should be a film history of this astoundingly important device.

Unfortunately, Eyes on the Skies is not so much a film as an hour-long public relations special, with the sheer weight of official approval — it’s a joint production of IYA2009, the International Astronomical Union, the European Space Agency, and the European Southern Observatory — tending to smother its occasional flashes of character. True, there are a few exceptions, particularly in the first two chapters, which cover the telescope’s history from Galileo’s sketches to the 5 m Hale Telescope on Mount Palomar in California. We learn, for example, that legal disputes prevented anyone from earning a patent on the telescope, and that William Herschel’s biggest scope required four servants to operate its complicated system of ropes and pulleys. A little later, presenter Joe Liske of the European Southern Observatory — known here, rather cringe-makingly, as “Dr J” — does a fine job of explaining in simple terms why reflecting telescopes can be bigger than refractors.

Once we reach the modern era, however, the slick artists’ impressions take over. At this point, Eyes on the Skies becomes a visually-stunning laundry list of ambitious projects, and its determination not to leave any of them out detracts from the overall story. The film’s website suggests that it could be shown at “public events carried out by educators, science centres, planetariums, amateur astronomers etc.”, but even with this audience in mind, one suspects that its producers might have been better off just sticking microphones in front of a handful of astronomers and asking them about their work. Indeed, the diverse group of bloggers over at IYA2009’s own Cosmic Diary website would have been a good place to start. In their case, “official” status has not lessened their passion or creativity, and they are far better ambassadors for astronomy than this beautiful but bland production.

Ultracold trios tell us more about Efimov states

Energy spectrum measured here
Energy spectrum measured here

Physicists in Italy have gained two important insights into Efimov states — in which three or more atoms form bound states, even though pairs of the same atoms do not bind together.

Massimo Inguscio and colleagues at the University of Florence have made the first Efimov trimers that contain two different species of atoms. A separate team led by Inguscio has also made the first measurement of the energy spectrum of a trimer comprising three identical atoms.

In 1970 the Russian physicist Vitali Efimov calculated that three particles should form quantum states that are loosely bound together — despite the absence of bound states of any two pairs of particles in the system. This counterintuitive situation only occurs for particles that are bosons; that is, atoms that have integer values of intrinsic angular momentum, or spin.

Curiosities no more

Efimov states remained theoretical curiosities until the mid-1980s, when physicists began to discover “halo nuclei”. These comprise a compact nuclear core loosely bound to a halo of one or more neutrons (or protons). Conventional nuclear physics calculations say halo nuclei should not exist, so some physicists suggested that certain haloes may be Efimov states. But because halo nuclei are very short-lived and difficult to study, researchers have been unable to confirm this theory.

Then in 2006 researchers in Austria spotted the first experimental evidence for an Efimov trimer in an ultracold gas of atoms — confirming Efimov’s theory, and giving further credence to its application to halo nuclei. Two years later, the same team discovered the first Efimov quartet, suggesting that the theory also applies to four or more atoms.

Now Inguscio, Giovanni Barontoni, Francesco Minardi and others have spotted the first Efimov trimers made out of different atomic species in an ultracold gas. They looked at a mixture of potassium (K) and rubidium (Rb) atoms in a magnetic trap that is cooled to a few hundred nanokelvin. The mixture is exposed to a magnetic field that causes a short-range interaction between atoms of different species — but not between the same species.

Introducing KRbRb and KKRb

The team adjusted the strength of the “interspecies” interaction energy by changing the magnetic field and found that found that trimers are formed at certain energies. They know this because unlike individual atoms, trimers are not held by the trap and are lost to the experiment. By carefully measuring how many K and Rb atoms are lost in this process, the team concluded that two Efimov trimers were being formed: KRbRb and KKRb.

According to Barontoni, this first sighting of “heteronuclear atomic” trimers strengthens the idea that the Efimov effect is behind halo nuclei because such nuclei comprise two different types of particles: neutrons and a nuclear core.

Elswhere in Inguscio’s lab, Matteo Zaccanti, Giovanni Modugno and colleagues have found the best evidence yet that an Efimov trimer has a spectrum of different energy states — as predicted by theory.

The team used laser cooling and trapping techniques followed by evaporative cooling to create a Bose Einstein condensate of potassium atoms held at just 100 nK. By changing an applied magnetic field, the team adjusted the interaction energy between the atoms and kept a close watch on how many atoms were lost from the trap. Their results show that trimers form at two distinct energies — which they say are two energy states of an Efimov trimer.

‘Important results’

Hanns-Christoph Nägerl at the University of Innsbruck described the two experiments as “very nice and very important results”. Nägerl, who was part of the team that first spotted Efimov trimers in 2006, added that the work provides important insights into how the Efimov effect could occur in halo nuclei, and how trimer energy levels could be structured.

Massimo Inguscio told physicsworld.com that the lab plans to create an optical lattice of crisscrossing laser beams in which each lattice contains just one Efimov trimer. In the current experiments the trimers decay rapidly because they interact with other atoms in the gas. However, trimers isolated in lattice sites could stick around long enough for the team to study them using a radio-frequency probe. This could, for example, allow the physicists to detect higher-order Efimov energy states.

Another avenue of exploration could be the creation of Efimov states from three different atomic species.

The research is published in Physical Review Letters and Nature Physics.

Jockeying for position

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Peak time

By Michael Banks

When submitting an article to the arXiv preprint server you might not think it matters when in the day you do it.

But according to new analysis by the server’s founder Paul Ginsparg and Asif-ul Haque from Cornell University, it does, and it could affect how many citations the paper will receive.

They looked at arXiv paper submissions between 2002 and 2004 in three categories: astrophysics (astro-ph), high energy physics – theory (hep-th) and high energy physics – phenomenology (hep-ph).

They found that papers appearing at the top of the list each day generated more citations than papers lower down.

Researchers can submit articles to arXiv at any time of the day. However, there is a cut-off point at 4pm eastern time (EST) for papers to appear on the server on the same day, which are then published at 8pm.

Articles submitted just after 4pm EST will be published the next day. The first paper to be submitted in a certain category after this cut-off time will then be top of the following day’s list.

Interestingly enough, Haque and Ginsparg see a spike in submissions to the server just after 4pm EST (see above chart for submissions to hep-ph) as physicists jostle for top position on the next day.

Physicists’ instincts for trying to land top spot are now backed up by evidence.

Haque and Ginsparg find that papers appearing in the number one position in the astrophysics category, overall, received a median number of citations 83% higher than other papers on that day.

Articles in hep-ph taking the top four places received a median number of citations 100% higher than those published in positions 5-15. For articles in hep-th it was 50% higher.

They also found that the position of the article on arXiv also affected how many full text downloads it had.

Articles taking the daily number one spot in astro-ph, hep-th and hep-ph received a median number of downloads 82%, 61% and 58% higher than that for lower positioned articles, respectively.

This means that it is good news if you are a researcher in the US itching to get the number one spot.

However, researchers in the UK would have to wait until midnight to get a chance of being top, while researchers in Japan would have to get into the office bright and early just after 8am to secure top spot.

So when you submit your next paper to the arXiv remember to keep an eye on the time.

Have your say on the future of Earth science

earth science.jpg

By James Dacey

What is the most important research question in Earth system research that needs answering in the next decade? Why?

These two questions have been posed by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in cooperation with the International Social Science Council in a new online survey.

Responses are being encouraged from scientists but the “Earth System Visioning” project is billed as an open, moderated process where absolutely anyone can chip in. What’s more you can suggest as many questions as you like just as long as you don’t repeat previous suggestions.

If you’re interested in posting a question you’ll have to get in before midnight on August 15th. You can also comment on the questions posed by others and this feedback will be analysed at a workshop in September, which will feed into a draft research strategy. A second meeting will take place in May 2010 to take on board feedback and then a finalized research strategy will be presented later that year.

So who are the ICSU and what do they hope to achieve with this document?

Well, unless you’ve been trapped in a time warp, it’s pretty obvious by now that environmental research programmes – and those related to climate change in particular – tend to be formed at a confluence between natural science, politics, and economics.

Amongst the ICSU’s funders are UNESCO and the US National Science Foundation and a lot of the science that went into the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) came ICSU-funded programmes.

The idea with their latest web consultation process is to help shape the environmental research agenda for the next 10 years, whilst encouraging the social sciences to play a more active role.

Is it a good idea?

Well, I saw the Age of Stupid yesterday – a new film about the imminent and severe threat of climate change – and if its gloomy forecasts are right then I really hope this ICSU survey is well thought out.

Walk this way

walking.jpg
Like this

By Hamish Johnston

I am one of the lucky few in the western world who can walk to work. It’s a five-mile (8 km) round trip and I have been doing it most days for over a decade.

Sadly, I’m getting to that age where I can feel the effects of all that walking — an occasional sharp pain in my left foot that has thus far defied a medical explanation.

So I was very interested to read this piece on the Guardian website about the role of arm swinging in walking.

According to researchers in the Netherlands, swinging arms exert a succession of alternating torques on the body, which counteract the torques created by the swinging of the legs.

In a normal gait you swing your right arm forward as your left leg swings backwards and vice versa. However, if you walk with your hands behind your back, you use 12% more energy — and if you swing your right arm and right leg in the same direction etc, you use an astonishing 26% more energy.

I had a quick try at all these gaits and I have convinced myself that I can feel the effect of the unbalanced torques.

If you are a bit more self-conscious, you can watch a video of all three gaits on the Guardian website.

It’s amazing how “natural” the walker looks when he uses the normal swing — whereas when arms and legs move in the same direction it looks like something out of a Monty Python sketch.

Three-in-one oven could ease energy needs in developing world

A combined combustion oven and refrigerator that can also harness electricity from its vibrations is now undergoing field trials in the UK and Nepal. The versatile appliance has been developed over the past two years through a UK research collaboration led by the University of Nottingham. With its cheap production costs and variety of functions, the new generator could become an affordable and sustainable energy technology for communities in the developing world, say the project leaders.

Underpinning the electricity generator is a two-step energy conversion from heat to sound to electricity, which takes place inside a gas-filled pipe. A fire at one end of the pipe creates a temperature gradient, which triggers acoustic waves as gas moves from hot to cold regions — much like a singing kettle as the water reaches boiling point. These sound waves can then be harnessed by a linear alternator, which converts mechanical energy into electrical electricity in the reverse process to an electric motor.

What’s more, some of the pipe’s vibrations can also be passed into another thermoacoustic engine, which works in reverse to generate a cooling effect. Finally, the heat from the burning wood or other available biomass can also be used for cooking. The real innovation is that these three functions can be run simultaneously to provide the users with a combined stove, refrigerator and electricity generator.

Three-in-one

The SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity supply) project was launched two years ago with the aim of developing an affordable, versatile domestic appliance to address the energy needs of rural communities in Africa and Asia, where access to power is extremely limited. One advantage of the new generator is its efficiency, which is higher than that in thermocouples — another device that converts heat into electrical energy. “The best [thermocouples] I have seen are less than 5–7% efficient. Compare this with 15–20% for a thermoacoustic engine,” said project director Paul Riley.

Technical development of the appliance has been split between different institutions in the UK. Researchers at the University of Nottingham have been working to maximize the efficiency of the linear accelerator. “The current design is very exciting for me as it solves many of the problems we had with using loudspeakers as alternators,” said Chitta Saha, a member of the Nottingham team.

Researchers at City University London have been developing the stove design and working with the University of Manchester to hone the thermoacoustic engine. In addition, researchers at Queen Mary University of London are working on the heat transfer aspects of the device.

Putting it into action

Paul Riley told physicsworld.com that his team has already generated 8 W of electrical power by using a propane burner instead of biomass. “We have built the stove top unit using local materials and tested it in Nepal. The results look very encouraging — the science is progressing well and we have developed mathematical models that are being tested,” he said.

The SCORE team are aiming to create a generator weighing between 10 and 20 kg, at a cost of £20 per household, based on the production of a million units. The target is to generate an hour’s use per kilogram of fuel — which could be wood, dung or any other locally available biomass material. SCORE are now looking for sponsorship to fund further testing and Riley believes that the Indian sub-continent (particularly Nepal), sub-Saharan Africa and South America are regions that could benefit particularly from the new innovation.

Riley also told physicsworld.com that his team will also begin to explore other applications once they have proven the technology. “Examples could include waste heat recovery, CHP for domestic boilers and low-cost solar power,” he said.

Film review: The Time Machine

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Scaffolding on the LHC’s ATLAS detector during construction. Credit: CERN

It may seem odd to think of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) as a “time machine”. After all, in its usual science-fiction sense, the phrase refers to a telephone-booth-sized device you climb into before zooming off to explore the future, like the hero of H G Wells’ novel. Yet as filmmaker Yariv Friedman points out in The Time Machine, the LHC should allow physicists to study what happened in the instant after the Big Bang — thereby transporting them, in some sense, through 13.7 billion years of cosmic history.

Friedman’s documentary on this real-life time machine follows a multilingual team of scientists through the final stages of the collider’s construction, where footage taken inside the ATLAS detector offers ample proof of its complexity. Here, even the scaffolding looks complicated, like a giant adventure playground crawling with hard-hatted engineers and physicists. Interviews with scientists offer glimpses of the non-technical challenges; one team leader describes his task as “management by coffee…you have to drink a lot of coffee with a lot of different people to get to the end product”.

The most telling comments, however, come in the run-up to the collider’s gala opening in September 2008. ATLAS’ technical coordinator declares that the LHC will work because “behind every nut or bolt is someone who cares”, while another scientist confesses that he cried when he saw the first particle traces. After this initial success, the shutdown nine days later, “felt like a kick in the teeth,” admits project manager Lyn Evans. Like the project it chronicles, The Time Machine doesn’t quite get off the ground within its hourlong running time, but there’s some great material in this near-miss.

Big bucks for physicists

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How salaries stack up. Credit: PayScale

By Margaret Harris

Here’s a rare bit of economic good news: people with physics degrees earn more, on average, than their fellow graduates in all but a handful of disciplines.

According to this study by the US website PayScale, physicists are the sixth-highest-earning group of graduates, with a median salary of $98,800 (just under £60k) after at least 10 years in the workforce. Indeed, physics was one of only three non-engineering majors to crack the top ten, along with computer science and economics. Starting salaries for physicists aren’t bad either: $51,100, or a respectable 14th on the same list of 75 different subjects.

In addition to looking at degree subject, the study also ranked 320 US colleges and universities according to their graduates’ salaries. Readers familiar with the US educational system will find some fascinating results in the list for example, graduates of Loma Linda University, a religious college in southern California, have the highest median starting salary, while Dartmouth College grads earn the most at mid-career.

(more…)

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