Warning: This is a prank

Secret hack to get headphone jack on the iPhone 7

A little byte music

Restoring world's first recorded computer music

Biased thinking?

20 cognitive biases that screw up your decisions.

Going dotty?

Now you see them, now you don’t - Here's why you can't see all twelve black dots in this optical illusion.

Staying small

≤200mm semiconductor manufacturing is here to stay

Sweat test

A flexible wearable sensor that can accurately measure a person’s blood alcohol level from sweat

Expensive (old) apple

'First Apple computer' sells for $815,000

Chargers to get bigger in consumer electronics

Gallium nitride power ICs may find a niche in charging technologies with a recent report suggesting that consumer electronics chargers could comprise 30% of the GaN market in 2022.

The World’s largest database of crystal surfaces and shapes

Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego, have created the world’s largest database of elemental crystal surfaces and shapes. The open source database called Crysatlium can be accessed online.

Single crystal measures radioactivity

A research team at Empa and ETH Zurich has developed single crystals made of lead halide perovskites, which are able to detect gamma radiation offering a new route to low cost radiation detectors. 

Don’t call me, I won’t call you

I assume that social and behavioural scientists will write volumes in the years to come about the effects of smartphones on society and relationships. The recent Deloitte's sixth annual Mobile Consumer Survey looked at the mobile phone habits of more than 4,000 UK consumers. Amongst its highlights being that one in three adults argue with their partner about using their mobile phone too much; about a tenth use their handsets ‘always’ or ‘very often’ while eating at home or in restaurants and a third while with friends or watching television. Interestingly, 31% of smartphone users make no traditional voice calls in a given week. This figure was just 4% in 2012. 

You cannot be serious

The 26th Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded last month and remind us that humour, satire and science do (occasionally) rub shoulders. A well deserved $10tn Zimbabwean note went to those honoured. Worthy of special mention in this year’s crop of winners include:  a study on the effects of wearing polyester, cotton, or wool trousers on the sex life of rats, and for conducting similar tests with human males; and work assessing the perceived personalities of rocks, from a sales and marketing perspective.

There is nothing new under the sun

Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) sounds like a serious new field of study but what if one attaches the more colloquial title of cold fusion? Whatever did happened to Pons and Fleischmann? However with the lure of cheap energy and as potential funding issues surface LENR is attracting debate and major questions relating to fact or fraud being posed.

I believe that one Isaac Newton contributed a few things to science but managed to spend years working on alchemy and the occult, including the Philosopher's Stone. Were his grant applications peer reviewed?

Thought for the month - October 2016

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.” Soren Kierkegaard, Danish Philosopher (1813-55).