Taiwan (21.8%) and S. Korea (21.3%) head the global IC wafer capacity in 2018 according to the Global Wafer Capacity 2019-2023 report.

Oppy dies on Mars

Rover over, One dead?
Last month NASA declared that after nearly 15 years of successfully trundling around Mars the exploration rover nicknamed "Oppy" had ceased to function. A far less auspicious Martian enterprise may also have come to an end with Mars One Ventures AG entering administration. The proposed reality TV funded project to send people to Mars may sadly linger on through a new investor.

Dangerous tools?
A paper at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting has questioned whether we are producing erroneous science by the use of machine learning algorithms. The concern being that these tools have been developed specifically to find interesting things in datasets and so when they search through huge amounts of data they will inevitably find a pattern. A lack of reproducibility in science may also be a result. Others suggest that it is not the tools but how they are used that produces problems.

Some people believe that the earth is flat, others that the Apollo moon landings were faked. The Flat Earth International Conference is being held in November. Two days with an exhibition! The conference website promotes a Flat Earth cruise in 2020, clearly unconcerned that for many years marine navigation has relied upon a more spherical model of the earth. Can we dismiss these people and ideas as irrelevant or are there wider lessons to be learnt that impact more serious issues? Bernstein's concept of an idiot culture maybe a bit harsh but too often scientific rationale is lost, and sometimes poorly communicated, in a plethora of opinions. Being right is not the same as being effective.

One ring to rule them all?
CERN has published, in four volumes, its ideas for a £20bn successor to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), given the working name of Future Circular Collider. The circular tunnel would have a circumference of about 100 kilometres (62 miles), almost four times longer than the current LHC. Undoubtedly it would be a tool for progressing particle physics and our knowledge of matter and dark matter. However will politicians and those in other scientific areas think it precious?

PVD Products, Inc.
Customer Application Spotlight: Driving adoption of unique MAPLE deposition techniques at Duke University. 

k-Space Associates, Inc.
Spectral reflectance tool released for VCSEL growth and other applications - contact us for more details.

Notes on the meetings of the Royal Society taken by Hans Sloane between 1668 and 1711 are now available as digital resources.

219 inch TVs and smart diapers were only two of the items on display at last month’s CES.

The International Statistic of 2018 is 90.5%. This is the proportion of plastic waste that has never been recycled, estimated at 6,300 million metric tonnes.

Periodic celebration
The United Nations has proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements being 150 years since Mendeleev produced the first version. An 1885 version, printed in Vienna by Verlag v Lenoir & Forster, has been found at the University of St Andrews. It was bought by mail order in 1888 for three German goldmarks, the equivalent of about €20/$22/£17 today.