A periodic mass debate

periodic table of the chemical elementsElemental discoveries have been a recurring theme during my more than 20 years as a science writer, not least because that was the name of my first column on the web back in 1995/6. It’s apt then, that IUPAC and IUPAP have finally given official names to the three elements discovered during that period – elements 110, 111 and 112 have been named darmstadtium (Ds, discovered 1994), roentgenium (Rg, also first observed in 1994) and copernicium (Cn, found in 1996) respectively.

The adoption of these names will mean revisions to the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements once more, but there is an ongoing debate regarding the future of the Periodic Table per se. Some chemists believe that the PT is more than a mnemonic that it has some kind of fundamental structure that we are yet to determine and that with continued modifications it can evolve from Mendeleev’s original structure into something that provides even greater insights into the true nature of the chemical elements and their relationships with one another. Others are simply more concerned with making a PT that has greater value as an educational tool.

Two of the main protagonists in the debate, which has spread across the web are Eric Scerri and Philip Stewart. I recently interviewed Scerri and Stewart for the ChemistryViews site to find out a little bit more about them as people and why they are so drawn to the periodic debate.

Research Blogging IconBradley, D. (2011). Periodic Debate ChemViews DOI: 10.1002/chemv.201000093

Edmund Halley Google Doodle

Another scientific Google Doodle. Yesterday, it was Marie Curie, today Google is celebrating the birthday of English astronomer Edmund Halley (8 November 1656 — 14 January 1742) who is perhaps best known for deriving the orbit of the eponymous comet and being mispronounced by 1950s rock and rollers. Halley was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, following in the footsteps of John Flamsteed.

In November 1703, Halley was appointed Savilian Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford. Two years later he published Synopsis Astronomia Cometicae, in which argued that the comet sightings of 1456, 1531, 1607, and 1682 related to the same comet and predicted that it would reappear in 1758. Halley did not live to see its reappearance, but the comet is now commonly known as Halley’s Comet. We last saw Halley’s Comet, which is officially known as 1P/Halley, in 1986 and given its 75-76 year short period around the sun it will not appear to the naked eye in Earth’s skies until around 28th July 2061 (perihelion).

 

Quantum levitation

We’ve all seen the demonstration of the Meissner effect in which a magnet is made to seemingly “hover” above a superconductor. If you haven’t I blogged about it a while back, March 2007 to be precise. Last week, a new video emerged that shows the Meissner effect in action, but this time highlighting the quantum locking of channels of magnetic field that get trapped within the chilly superconductor. The effect is very nice:

The hovering puck is a crystal sapphire wafer 500 micrometres thick coated in a yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) ceramic and colled to 185 Celsius to make it superconducting. Team leader Guy Deutscher of Tel Aviv University uses it to demonstrated “quantum trapping” and “quantum levitation” at recent ATSC event in Baltimore. He told The Guardian that there are yet unlikely to be any application for this discovery, despite the obvious sci-fi potential of a Marty MFly hoverboard or Luke Skywalker hovercar…

Inevitable Sciencebase iPad app

Sciencebase has gone portably iOS. If you have an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch you can now view the site in (hopefully) optimised form, which might nominally be referred to as the Sciencebase App. The app brings you the regular blog updates from our non-identical twin sites: Sciencebase (science) and Sciencetext (Tech) as well as select Twitter updates from science and technology.

Let me know how it looks. Reader Aldo Brinkman pointed out that I hadn’t created a proper iOS “Springboard” icon, it was just showing a screen capture. That has now been remedied and I used our old friend the crown ether logo (which is ghosted above). It’s been the my site’s favicon and logo since its original incarnation as Elemental Discoveries back in 1996.

You can click the screengrab to get a sneak preview without opening your iPad if you’re reading this in a desktop browser.

Marie Curie Google Doodle

Today was the birthday of Marie Sklodowska Curie (7 November 1867 — 4 July 1934) Polish—French scientist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity and for whom the element curium is named. She was the first person honoured with two Nobel Prizes – in physics and in chemistry. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris.

Google celebrates Marie Curie with an impressionist doodle on its homepage in 2011 the “Year of Marie Curie”.

November science books

An odd mix of books landed on my desk during recent weeks from publishers keen to hear my thoughts on their authors’ output. First up is another owner’s manual from Haynes, this time it’s the Millennium Falcon, a modified YT-1300 Corellian Freighter. Rather than giving you the knowledge to change your spark plugs and adjust your tappets, this manual by Ryder Windham, Chris Reiff and Chris Trevas gives us the low down on quad laser cannon, concussion missiles and the Hanx-Wargel computer. A must for those people who still vote for Star Wars in those polls of the greatest movies ever made and kids into 1970s sci-fi.

“Civilizations Beyond Earth” edited by Douglas A Vakoch and Albert A Harrison. In thinking about first contact, the contributors to this volume present various ideas about on the social pyschology of SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Archaeologists and astronomers explore the likelihood that extraterrestrial intelligence exists, while sociologists discuss public attitudes towards ET. Mathematicians, chemists and journalists also chip in with thoughts on bridging the gap between humanity and extraterrestrial civilizations. Worthy as such efforts might seem, I am afraid I’m with Enrico Fermi on this one: Despite the grandiose gesturing and estimates of the elephantine probability of intelligent life elsewhere, there is no “alien” in the room…

An Engineer’s Alphabet by Hentry Petroski is subtitled “Gleanings from the softer side of a profession” (I bet that was his original title, but the publishers insisted on something snappier). This little book is basically and alphabetical compendium of quotations, anecdotes and “fun facts”…about engineering: egg-drop competitions, movies about engineering and US presidents who were engineers. One for the engineer in your life, I think.

Igor Novak in “Science: A Many-Splendored Thing” seems to equate allusion to the 1955 Henry King film “Love is a many splendored thing” based on the novel by Han Suyin with a good framework for writing about the multifaceted nature of science. I’m not so sure, yes, he discusses the historical, sociological, and philosophical aspects of science (which doesn’t have a capital letter in the middle of sentences, by the way), but it all seems to be well-trodden ground and terrible graphics lifted (with credit) from various websites. It is also very irritating to see words like science, society, reality and universe with an initial capital letter and missing pronouns when they’re needed as in: “prevailing conditions at the time Universe began”.

Also on my desk is “Escape from Bubbleworld: Seven curves to save the earth” by Keith Skene. “Skene explores how we ended up in Bubbleworld, and brings a positive message: we can escape! Using seven key graphs to explore how the rest of the planet works, he explains how we can rediscover sustainability within a new context, or rather, one that we used to know well. It’s not too late to escape from Bubbleworld!”

Bonus DVD: Genius of Britain from Athena sets out to “engage your mind” and “expand your world”. It’s videos of all the usual suspects Jim Al-Khalili, Richard Dawkins, James Dyson, Stephen Hawking, Paul Nurse, Olivia Judson and Kathy Sykes, with “guest” contributions from Robert Winston (he of the single data point TV experiment) and David Attenborough.

Pier review and quay metrics

UPDATE: Looks like the tide has turned and that there is now pier pressure to come up with the biggest breaker. David Dobbs now tells us there is no one shore path to assessment.

Earlier, I mentioned hypothes.is and how it was hoping to bring peer review to the internet. Immediately, the idea was greeted with derision by some. But curiously, luisitomavila was concerned that pier review (sic) would never be allowed by the government. Pier review? Lovely typo, put me in mind of a grading system for Southwold, Brighton and Tynemouth’s shoreline appendages. John Jackson of the Natural History Musuem then piped up and asked if “the use of pier review fairer than quay performance indicators?”

Luis then told us that at first he felt like an ass, but then that was the exact part of his body that fell off laughing. Unfortunately, in the UK the joke doesn’t work with that word as we have donkeys on our beaches. Speaking of which, science teacher Ian then retorted that, “either way people beach about it. Personally I’m tide of it all.” He wouldn’t dignify my follow-up with a response but he did wave…

Andrew Miller just shipped in to point out that pirate journals use single-blind pier review.

So, in the spirit of pursuing a typo to the bitter end, let’s end on a joke:

ISI, ISI, ISI! Why do crabs walk sideways?

Movember Blues

During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on countless faces across the globe, the aim being to raise awarness and funds for men’s health, and more specifically, prostate cancer.

But, what is a boy to do if beardy stubble is plentiful while the upper lip remains pretty much fuzz free? Sing the Movember Blues, of course. Words and music by yours truly.

Just in case you’d like to sing along, here are the words:

The Mo’vember Blues

I woke up this morning, I could swear an oath,
Went to the bathroom mirror, to check my stubble growth

Imagine my surprise, I ain’t gonna grin,
Got a forest growin’ out my face, but it’s all on my chin

I got the Movember blues, not feeling very hip.
I got the Movember blues, why won’t the hair grow on my upper lip

Four days of growing, I should be quite hirsute,
But I need hair restorer for this trivial pursuit

Reach for the razor, it’s time to recycle
Can’t bear to face this very day lookin’ like George Michael

‘got the Movember blues, not feeling very hip.
I got the Movember blues, why won’t the hair grow on my upper lip

Turned to my wife to see what she’s thinking
“You look like a goddam tramp and boy are you stinking!”

But, honey it’s for a good cause, prostate cancer awareness,
If I look like tramp, I really couldn’t care less

I got the Movember blues, not feeling very hip.
I got the Movember blues, why won’t the hair grow on my upper lip

Two weeks later, I’m cryin’ “who will save me?”
Trouble, is there’s two weeks left before anyone can shave me

The stubble’s getting itchy, my beard looks the worst
My upper lip’s still hairless, bring on December first

I got the Movember blues, not feeling very hip.
I got the Movember blues, why won’t the hair grow on my upper lip


Dedicated to my gorgeous wife, who wholly prefers me clean shaven.

Let’s peer review the Internet

A new site, Hypothes.is, aims to be a peer-review system for the Internet. It will be a distributed, open-source platform for the collaborative evaluation of information and will allow us to parse and critique words across the internet at the sentence-level through community peer-review.

Its creators say it will work as an overlay on top of any stable content, including news, blogs, scientific articles, books, terms of service, ballot initiatives, legislation and regulations, software code and more. All without the need for the site being critiqued to play any part in the process.

It is founded on 12 principles:

  1. Open – Open source, open standards.
  2. Work everywhere – To the extent practical. Without consent.
  3. Non-profit – Sustained by social enterprise.
  4. Neutral – Favor no ideological or political positions.
  5. 100% Community moderated – Bottoms up, not top down.
  6. Merit based – Influence based on track record.
  7. Pseudonymous – Credibility without public identity.
  8. International – By design.
  9. Transparent, auditable – In systems. In governance.
  10. Think long term – Infrastructure for 100 years? Or longer?
  11. Many formats, many contexts.
  12. Work with the best – Remain humble.

It’s a well-principled, ethical, useful and long-term idea. Just the sort of thing that someone will want to eradicate quickly…

Who do the science literati listen to on Twitter?

Tony Hirst has been playing with altmetric and reveals a graph of the who the science literati are listening to on Twitter. By drilling down, he’s also revealed some of the most trusted accounts in the scientific domain by limiting the graph to those accounts followed by 100 or more of the folk who sent papers mentioning the pertinent tweets. No, I don’t quite get it either, but having got out a magnifying glass to see if I could find sciencebase on the main graph, I was relieved to be among good company on the drill down, with familiar names such as Carl Zimmer, SciAm, newscientist, featuring in the same area as sciencebase.

Among the usual suspects on the main graphic are Ed Yong, Mo Costandi, Bora Zivkovic, Brendan Maher, Jonathan Eisen, Michael Müller via Who Do The Science Literati Listen to on Twitter? « OUseful.Info, the blog…