Smartphone growth

The world’s first modern smartphone, the Nokia Communicator, was introduced in 1996. According to Strategy Analytics there were 1.038 billion units in use worldwide by the third quarter of 2012

Hurrah, hurrEUh

Congratulations to the European Union (EU) on winning the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize for the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe over six decades. The cheering will be much louder if the EU could win the 2013 prize for Economic Sciences. 

Element 113 ...

Japan claims naming rights to element 113.

Meltaway electronics

Biocompatible electronic devices that dissolve harmlessly into their surroundings after functioning for a precise amount of time have been created by a team of biomedical engineers at Tufts University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. These transient electronic devices are very thin conventional circuits encapsulated in silk proteins, extracted from silkworm cocoons. Aimed at producing a generation of medical implants that would never need surgical removal the researchers have demonstrated the new platform by testing on rats a thermal device designed to monitor and prevent post-surgical infection.

Recycling bicycling

To win the Tour de France you probably need an expensive, high technology, carbon fibre framed bicycle. But for more mundane urban cyclists, that well known composite cardboard could be the material to watch. An Israeli inventor has pioneered the use of cardboard for the production of bikes. The 10 kilogram cardboard bicycle, which cost around $10 to make, can carry riders weighing up to 220 kilograms. Perhaps Mr Armstrong would have even won on one of these?

Cod's Law

Reflective surfaces polarize light, however a recent report found that silvery fish can overcome this basic law of reflection; an adaptation that may help them evade predators. Researchers found that the skin of sardines and herrings contains two types of guanine crystal. By mixing these two chemicals, the fish's skin doesn't polarize the reflected light and thus maintains its high reflectivity. This helps the fish best match the light environment of the open ocean, making them less likely to be seen. These non-polarizing organic reflectors may ultimately find applications with LEDs and low loss optical fibres.

XPS Workshop, University of Loughborough, 17 January 2013

Join us to learn how XPS works and how it can be used to understand problems on a variety of different sample types. This will be a small, interactive and focused event, there will be ample opportunity to raise questions. We will utilise the Thermo Scientific K-Alpha XPS tool located in LMCC. Contact us for further information, the deadline for early registration is 14th December. 

Behave like a lawyer?

Last month six scientists and one government official were found guilty on manslaughter charges relating to the 2009 earthquake that hit the Italian city of L'Aquila. The authorities who pursued the defendants stressed that the case was never about any failure to predict earthquakes - it was about what was interpreted to be an inadequate characterisation of the risks; of being misleadingly reassuring about the dangers that faced their city. I am not capable of commenting on the legal rights and wrongs of the case or the unpredictable nature of earthquakes but there is an issue here for us all, irrespective of our specific field of work. Within our chosen sphere we are experts familiar with the jargon, the caveats, the axioms and the unproven. We take much for granted as assumed knowledge. When interacting with others from outside of our sphere, particularly in this time of sound bites and limited attention spans, we must be doubly careful when explaining what we mean. Accurate transmission is insufficient; it must be received and understood as we intended.

There is always danger in life in assuming that other people think like ourselves. The way forward cannot be that we work in secret nor all think and behave like lawyers.