The sun, the moon and the truth

According to Buddha, three things cannot be long hidden - the sun, the moon and the truth. Someone should try telling that to the unnamed Texan actor who has filed a $1 million lawsuit against a show business database for revealing her true age. Unfortunately, as Oscar Wilde noted, the truth is rarely pure and never simple. Neither Buddha nor Oscar Wilde had to cope with the internet and the rapid electronic dissemination of everything from truths and honest opinions to malicious spite and lies. The electronic blog age enables one, frequently anonymously, not only to enquire, inform and comment but also to slur and defame individuals and organisations. This non-trivial matter is being reviewed by the UK parliament and a Draft Deformation Bill (First Report) has been published. It recommends that where complaints are made about comments from identified authors the website should promptly publish a notice of the complaint alongside it. The complainant can then apply to a court for a "takedown" order which if granted, should result in the comment being removed, if the website is to avoid the risk of a defamation claim. However where potentially defamatory comments are anonymous, the website should immediately remove them on receipt of a complaint, unless the author agrees to identify themselves.

Whilst the above have already raised issues of freedom of speech, it is interesting to note that the parliamentarians also clearly state that scientists and academics must not be left in fear of being sued simply for doing their job. They recommend that the legislation extends qualified privilege to peer reviewed articles in scientific or academic journals. The reviewers quote the historic examples of the safety of smoking and the risks associated with a drug such as Thalidomide, where the truth eventually emerged only following persistent and impartial research. They note that a process of critical review is essential with work being published and subsequently challenged by others. Furthermore, the committee says that there is convincing evidence that defamation law is being used to silence members of the medical and scientific community in order to protect products and profits. They felt that it is unavoidable that efforts to uncover the truth and expand the limits of our understanding may sometimes turn out to be wrong or to clash with the commercial and personal interests of other individuals and corporate organisations.

Whilst ultimately these things have to be decided in a court, it will be very interesting to see the eventual guidance given to the judiciary concerning deciding which "peer review articles" or "scientific or academic conference" are appropriate for qualified privilege.

kSA 400 Users - Win an iPad 2!

If you are a current kSA400 user, we would like to solicit your help again in adding to our RHEED image and movie database for the benefit of all users. The goal of this library is for you to have reference RHEED images and movies, with embedded description, available within the kSA400 software and at your fingertips. For more information, click this link.

k-Space Newsletter Fall 2011

The latest newsletter from k-Space Associates features "k-Space is Expanding --- AGAIN!"; "k-Space Wins Phase II SBIR for In-Situ Monitoring During HgCdTe MBE Growth"; "New! kSA 400 Version 5.0 Software Now Available".

A kilogram of graphene?

Research at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) using graphene is underpinning a big change to the SI system of units. The goal being to relate all of the unit definitions to fundamental constants of nature. One of the key units to be redefined is the kilogram, currently defined by a physical lump of platinum-iridium. The other is the ampere. The goal is to define the kilogram in terms the Planck constant, h, and the ampere in terms of the electron charge, e. The Quantum Hall effect defines a relationship between h and e and is therefore key in any 'quantum-based' redefinition of mass and current. Experiments tested the quantum Hall effect in different materials in order to prove whether or not it is truly universal. NPL compared the quantum Hall effect in graphene with that observed in GaAs/AlGaAs and confirmed that the quantum Hall effect is truly universal with an uncertainty level of several parts in 1011, thus supporting the quantum based redefinition of both the kilogram and ampere.

The full paper is available this link.

Noble efforts

Last week saw the annual presentation of the 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes. As always this is a fascinating event and two prizes were of particular note this year: 1) Peace Prize: Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armoured tank. 2) Mathematics Prize: Dorothy Martin of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1954), Pat Robertson of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1982), Elizabeth Clare Prophet of the USA (who predicted the world would end in 1990), Lee Jang Rim of Korea (who predicted the world would end in 1992), Credonia Mwerinde of Uganda (who predicted the world would end in 1999), and Harold Camping of the USA (who predicted the world would end on September 6, 1994 and later predicted that the world will end on October 21, 2011), for teaching the world to be careful when making mathematical assumptions and calculations. Jobs at CERN beckon?

PVD Products PLD/MBE Systems

A new video from PVD Products, Inc. our partner in pulsed laser deposition systems has just been launched on YouTube. Take a look and see why customers choose this system, which RTA installs and supports in Europe.

Q3 results for Thermo Fisher Scientific

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE: TMO), the world leader in serving science, today reported its financial results for the third quarter ended October 1, 2011. Highlights include revenue growth of 13% to a record $2.97 billion and adjusted operating margin increased 120 basis points to 18.4%. RTA is of course pleased to have contributed its small part!

Not a flash in the pan?

Research group Gartner expect the 2011 market for worldwide ICs to decline slightly compared with 2010. Demand for DRAM memory being impacted by the reduced demand for PCs. However the growing demand for smartphones and iPads is fuelling the 20% growth for NAND flash memory devices. A week following the Gartner report, Samsung announced the operation of the world's largest NAND flash memory line. Located in Korea and housed in a twelve story building, Samsung started construction in May last year and the operating line is capable of producing over 10,000 12-inch wafers per month.

44,300,000 is a big number

Research and analysis by Strategy Analytics says that the recovery of the GaAs industry continued throughout 2010, resulting in a 26% increase in demand for semi-insulating (SI) GaAs substrates. They estimate that 2010 saw the consumption of nearly 30,000,000 square inches of SI GaAs substrates. The market research firm predicts that the total SI GaAs substrate market will grow at a compound annual average growth rate of 6% to more than 44,300,000 square inches in 2015.

GaN HEMTs

Researchers from ETH Zurich and CNRS France have used MBE to fabricate and RF analyse AlGaN/GaN HEMTs grown on (110) silicon substrates. Cut-off frequencies of 70GHz were measured.

The full text is available at this link.

To replace the transistor

Semiconductor Research Corp (SEC), a US university-research consortium, and the National Science Foundation, the US government agency supporting fundamental research, are funding 12 nanoelectronics research grants to $20 million. The interdisciplinary research teams at 24 participating US universities are funded to find a nanoelectronic switching mechanism as a replacement for the transistor. The Nanoelectronics for 2020 and Beyond programme involves several IC manufacturing companies including Globalfoundries, IBM, Intel, Micron Technology and Texas Instruments. The Nanoelectronics Research Initiative within SEC has a goal of demonstrating the feasibility of novel computing devices in simple computer circuits within the next five to ten years.

Details of the funded projects are available at this link.