RingBearers

How to choose a good scientific problem

2010-12-03T01:05:00.000-08:00

"Choosing good problems is essential for being a good scientist. But what is a good problem, and how do you choose one?"
This is the incipit of the abstract of a nice article of Uri Arlon of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

Here is the link:http://download.cell.com/molecular-cell/pdf/PIIS1097276509006418.pdf?intermediate=true

Enjoy!

A year has passed since I wrote my note

2010-11-05T01:55:00.000-07:00

And, after citing this verse from a famous song of the Police, we can resume our blog.

I have finished reading the autobiography " Surely you´re joking, Mr. Feynmann!". It is really enjoyable, he really was a curious character.
But I would like to quote here a serious wish that he made at the end of the book:

"So I have just one wish for you-the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the integrity, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom."

never plan something...

2009-06-25T01:06:00.000-07:00

...if you are still in (or near) the lab.
But if you want to have a good excuse to escape a boring event in the evening, just say "today I'm leaving at 6.00PM". Be sure, something will come on the way, and you will have to call at 5:55, to apologize because you have to work...

Murphy´s law at the seaside

2009-06-18T08:53:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of working near the sea is that in summer, when there is shutdown, you can happily go to the beach in the late afternoon after work.
It is a week that my colleagues and I are planning this: at 5 pm we leave work and go to the beach (cool stuff, usually we get out from here at 8 pm). Our boss is in vacation somewhere.
It would be for me the first beach day of the season (note that it is the 18th of june)
Ok, at 5 I go to the toilet and put on my swim suite under the normal clothes, I go back to the office to turn off my computer...I am ready to leave ... I touch the mouse.....
RRRRINGGGGG!!! my skype sounds
It is the boss
"Do not answer!" the others yell
But I cannot. I am stupid. And I have to submit a paper in three days.
Ok, I am a stupid.
I answer.
We talk, and then he says: "I have an hour for you, I will call you back in one hour and a half"
And here I am waiting for him (the others are already at the seaside)
I am stupid
Next time I will submit papers in autumn or in winter

prosciutto prosciutto

2009-04-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

This link was suggested by a colleague: it's a perfect example of useless - but funny - science:

http://www.popsci.com/bacon

please note, that prosciutto is NOT a better engineered (?), more expensive type of bacon (OK, a scientist is not supposed to be a connoisseur, but hey, at least this!) ...it's HAM!

The big bang theory

2009-02-24T00:45:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to a sit-com about scientists..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFS1F-3XVtk

The worst thing is that I can really understand the way the main characters think and feel....maybe I really have to worry...

where is the black hole?

2008-10-02T01:26:00.000-07:00

We were waiting eagerly for the black hole generated by LHC. What a disappointment...
So, to cheer us up, we watched at the videos of the real LHC group:
http://www.cernettes.com/

My favourite is the "collider" song, even if also "liquid nitrogen"...

night shift at ESRF

2008-07-15T05:29:00.000-07:00

the post doc metaphor

If it works it works

2008-06-30T08:20:00.001-07:00

indian philosophy of our indian colleague.
His experimental setup is rarely failing

It has to work it has to work it has to work or I´ll make it work
my philosophy
My experimental setup is always misworking (when it works)

Am I missing something???????

administrative staff vs researchers = 1-0

2008-06-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

There is no way, the administratives will always win.
This week the air conditioning in the ring has been stopped due to maintenance reasons. Of course this was the hottest week of the spring-summer period up to now (Murphy´s law never fails).
The ring was an oven and you could see baked researchers slowly boiling in front of their monitors.
Nothing happened
Then, the air conditioning system has been stopped in the offices.
Administrative staff rose up.
The next day, after an e-mail of apologize from the maintenance people, the air conditioning was up again.

So, lesson of the day: when the air conditioning goes down, put the administrative staff in the ring

When the going gets tough the tough gets going

2008-06-16T03:13:00.000-07:00

Anyway, I am really tired keeping going. Why EVERY single step towards succes is like climbing the everest? Sometimes I would really like to give up...

Science seeker

2008-06-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

June has come but summer not yet. Who cares, I am spending my life in the clean room! I think I will put my official residence place there...
Science is a very demanding lover. It makes you stay up to late in the night, it captures your thoughts in the strangest moments (under the shower, in the early morning in the slight border between sleeping and awaking), it makes you seek it in the weekend..
And then..
I am never able to catch it!
Sometimes I wish I never had met it at all
But there are moments, like seing the synchrotron hidden life on a sunny sunday morning, in which I really believe that this is the right place for me..
Lets hope that my boss has the same idea!

Etching Silicon Nitride

2008-04-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

I am doing a Reactive Ion Etching to remove some silicon nitride from my x-ray mask. This process is so quick and interesting that I think it could be used by the Maleficent Witch of Snow White instead of the apple...

zen and the art of withstanding the delay of publications

2008-03-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Hallo to everybody.
Yes, I know, I have been away for more than a month, but I was caught by flu and, even worse, by writing an article. A dreadful experience, ending in an even more dreadful way: we will have to wait to publish, as the results we have did not prove sufficient. And it is not even my fault!
It is terrible. If as scientist I am to be evaluated on the basis of publications, I can apply for a position of lab-cleaner... this independently from all my efforts...
What does it mean? That I love research but I am not suitable for it? Am I the microtechnology Cyrano?
Or only that I have to go to Lourdes (or to the Mecca, to be sure that I have tested any chance)?
Why did nobody write something about zen and publications disappointment?
Or at least edit the "Journal of unpredictable mistakes "?

the user of the mouth (2006)

2008-02-01T09:55:00.000-08:00

The user of the month

2008-01-31T06:29:00.000-08:00

In our beamline (i.e. experimental station wich uses a synchrotron light source...ah, now it is really clear!!) we have a lot of users. In fact, everyone who has good ideas about experiments, can apply for beamtime (time for experiments) at our lab. After an evaluation process from an external scientific review committee, succesful users can come once or twice a year for 3-5 days to perfrorm their experiments. And with 3-5 days we intend FULL days: 24 hours over 24. In our case we decided to invent the prize for the "user of the month". How does it work? Well, users who make the craziest picture inside the beamline or our lab win the competition. The prize consists in....glory...(after all we are scientist, and should be used to it... :p ). It is unbelievable what people can do after at least 2 days of sleepless working......you will see....

the crazy thought of the day

2008-01-16T10:33:00.000-08:00

Lithography is like porc, you never throw anything away..

back to work

2008-01-08T01:43:00.000-08:00

First of all, happy 2008 to all!

I am here again, after a hard working pre Christmas and totally not working Christmas time.
And I have to say that it is REALLY difficult being back to work.
I am here in clean room listening to jazz and spinning my "odi et amo" SU8 2025, but I would like to be elsewhere, for example on the mountains! At least there would be white light!

Santa´s elf with cleanrom suit

2007-12-11T09:39:00.000-08:00

Ho Ho Ho!
This morning, when nobody was around, I put some windows Xmas decorations on the cleanrooms´transparent doors. PhD students were quite amused, but I really hope the Punisher won´t catch me...

He was not very happy when some time ago I appended outside the cleanroom door the removable front door mat (on which people clean their CLEANROOM boots before entering) showing the footprint of NORMAL shoes which accidentally bore the same brand as his own...

microfluidics in the kitchen!

2007-12-10T04:48:00.000-08:00

This is really cool!

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/macgyver-scienc.html

next time in the kitchen... lamb on chips!

plasma

2007-12-06T02:03:00.000-08:00

Some time ago, the Punisher found CSI in the clean room making an alternative RIE process using a plasma of Hydrogen and Oxygen...
"AAAAAAGGGHHH!" he cried "What the hell are you doing?? It is DANGEROUS! The mixture can explode!!!"
"Don' t worry" CSI replied " I have exactly calculated the amount of gases in order to be completely safe"
"And what about the machine's precision in measuring gas fluxes?" the Punisher asked
"Ops!" was the answer.

So we can conclude two things
1- always consider the REAL instruments that you are using
2 - bad grass never dies

Caipiranha: an explosive cocktail

2007-12-03T02:31:00.000-08:00

Piranha solution is not a subtle way to get rid of annoying people (at least not yet :p ), but a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and sulphuric acid, and it is commonly used to clean samples.
The simplest recipe that I was taught was the following: put in a glass a certain amount of sulphuric acid, then pour hydrogen peroxide till it starts smoking.
You can now understand why it is called "piranha"..

Some time ago, CSI (Crazy Scientist Indeed) and his Ph.D student IKE (I Know Everything), were in the clean room preparing piranha. IKE has a bachelor in chemistry. After using the solution to clean their samples, while it was still warm, IKE put it in a piranha waste bottle which was already half full....and tightily closed the lid....
BOOOMMMMMM!
After a few seconds the bottle exploded. Luckily they both had moved away and the piranha reched only CSI's trousers.
The clean room was evacuated for almost a week and remained smelly for a month.
And if you come and visit us and look at the ceiling you can still see the trace of the explosion..

So, what can we conclude?
Two things:

1- Always be careful with waste bottles, and leave them degassing before closing the lids
2- Bad grass never dies

Cleaning is for meditation

2007-11-28T10:14:00.000-08:00

That is what T said after his last beamtime (dedicated period for experiments) while cleaning the beamline and the lab. He is always perfectly cleaning everything both before and after his experiments. Last time he found two cables which we had been looking for for two months.The only problem is that when he finds something he does not recognize as useful, he throws it away.
I hope I will always be able to escape from him in time ... ;)
I am trying to convince him that my house is a beamline, but it does not work....
This is a real pity...I hate house cleaning!

Merry B

intersting link

2007-11-27T09:56:00.001-08:00

Ok, now that you have seen us at our best (i.e. during holidays), you will know us at our worst..ops...work!
We work/live in a research center, and research world and its inhabitants will be the main subject of this blog. Maybe that we will even be able to talk about science! (in this last case, whoever will be caught at laughing, will be properly punished...)

It is always interesting to see how people confront themselves with the research world. While working in the cleanroom, waiting for the end of a wet etching, I was reading as little bit of "Science" and found a kind of diary:

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_development/previous_issues/articles/3220
/educated_woman_the_grad_school_adventures_of_micella_phoenix_dewhyse_index/
(parent)/158

take a look!

The Merry B

Of rings, nanoscales, science and sociology

2007-11-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

Should a multi-disciplinary point of view on sciences be a good incipit?

In fact, this should be the topic of this blog - science - this is what we do, or at least we try to.
If you are a scientist, or you wanted to be one in your childhood, you will understand what follows: do you remember, when in the primary school somebody asked you "what would you like to be when you are grown-up?", and you thought "I will be a chemist/biologist/physicist/..., I will discover the wonderful secrets of the world and make the difference in other people's life"? OK, this is how it was for me, and my childhood dream became reality (even if yes, I am discovering some secrets, but how they change the other people's life is still a question mark... ), and I became what I am now, perhaps not a full scientist, but working - sometime this means living, actually- in a hi-tech, high level Scientific Institution, where X-rays are created by electrons running along a ring - it's a synchrotron radiation source!
Working in science, there is something new to learn almost every day: one of the first lessons I got when I started working here, is that something exciting was missing in my romantic, childish idea of being a scientist: there is more material for a sociological analysis in a lab, than somebody that has never entered one can guess.
Some say scientists are eccentric - well, you don't know how eccentric they can be...

cigar B

and I am B! (on vacation)

2007-11-26T11:38:00.001-08:00

2007-11-26T11:32:00.001-08:00

Hi, I am B!

2007-11-26T11:31:00.001-08:00

ueee ueee we are born!

2007-11-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

One ring to rule them all,
One ring to find them,
One ring to bring them all,
and in the light bind them...

Now, try to guess what we do!!!!