Science in the News (please post articles of general interest here)

[Probeman]

Just read "How to Find a Higgs Boson―and Other Big Mysteries in the World of the Very Small"

https://www.amazon.com/Higgs-Boson_and-Other-Mysteries-World/dp/0300244185

A very easy read for non-scientists in your family or friends that are "science curious".

[Probeman]

Researchers broke the record for the shortest pulse of electrons ever:

https://interestingengineering.com/science/shortest-pulse-of-electrons-ever

A record-breaking short pulse of electrons just 53 billionths of a billionth of a second long has been generated – it is so fast it could allow microscopes to grab images of electrons jumping between atoms

Wouldn't that be cool?

[Probeman]

One of our favorite Youtube channels is RobWords, a channel devoted to the etymology of the words in the English language.

It's worth watching all the RobWords Youtube episodes, but this episode on the origin of the element names in the Periodic table will probably be of particular interest to the members of this forum:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGEKU0BXtgg

[Probeman]

Here's a new mineral (documented by Chi Ma at Cal Tech):

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mineralogical-magazine/article/abs/kyawthuite-bi3sb5o4-a-new-gem-mineral-from-mogok-burma-myanmar/3314023F5B60F798CB817AA201EC7C92

Only one known natural specimen:

https://www.livescience.com/rarest-mineral-on-earth

[Probeman]

Here's an interesting new journal:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/hardwarex

Aims & Scope
HardwareX
An open access scientific hardware journal

If this journal is a good fit for your scientific hardware, you can find out more via the Guide for Authors and are invited to submit your manuscript using the HardwareX template.

HardwareX is a multidisciplinary, open access, peer-reviewed journal which publishes articles that describe the design, construction and customization of scientific devices and equipment.

HardwareX promises to make scientific hardware:

    Accessible - We will make your hardware article immediately and freely accessible.
    Discoverable - We will make your hardware article easy to find and download.
    Citable - Receive recognition for the work that you've done to develop scientific hardware with a peer-reviewed article with a distinct DOI. We will help you drive traffic to your hardware article.
    Comprehensible - We will help you write a hardware article that is easy to digest and interpret.
    Reviewed - Your article will be reviewed by experts in open source hardware.
    Reproducible - Reduce duplication of effort with detailed descriptions of your hardware that make it easy for your peers to replicate and reproduce.



HardwareX is open to input from all scientific, technological, and medical disciplines. Scientific infrastructure will be interpreted in the broadest sense. Including hardware modifications to existing infrastructure, sensors and tools that perform measurements and other functions outside of the traditional lab setting (such as wearables, air/water quality sensors, and low cost alternatives to existing tools), and the creation of wholly new tools for either standard or novel laboratory tasks. Authors are encouraged to submit hardware developments that address all aspects of science, not only the final measurement, for example, enhancements in sample preparation and handling, user safety, and quality control. The use of distributed digital manufacturing strategies (e.g. 3-D printing) is encouraged. All designs must be submitted under an open hardware license.

Your next step.

If this journal is good fit for your scientific hardware, you can find out more via the Guide for Authors and submit using the HardwareX template.

[Probeman]

I am really enjoying this new book "Beyond Measure" which describes the history of measurement science.

https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Measure-History-Measurement-Constants/dp/1324035854

A vibrant account of how measurement has invisibly shaped our world, from ancient civilizations to the modern day.

From the cubit to the kilogram, the humble inch to the speed of light, measurement is a powerful tool that humans invented to make sense of the world. In this revelatory work of science and social history, James Vincent dives into its hidden world, taking readers from ancient Egypt, where measuring the annual depth of the Nile was an essential task, to the intellectual origins of the metric system in the French Revolution, and from the surprisingly animated rivalry between metric and imperial, to our current age of the “quantified self.” At every turn, Vincent is keenly attuned to the political consequences of measurement, exploring how it has also been used as a tool for oppression and control.

Beyond Measure reveals how measurement is not only deeply entwined with our experience of the world, but also how its history encompasses and shapes the human quest for knowledge.

[Probeman]

Electrons are close to perfection!  If the electron’s charge wasn’t perfectly round, it could reveal the existence of hidden particles. A new measurement approaches perfection:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-electron-is-so-round-that-its-ruling-out-new-particles-20230410/

[Probeman]

I am not a geologist but I enjoy hanging around with them, and of course reading about geology. If you are a geologist or just someone who enjoys geology, well, this book is for you:

https://www.amazon.com/Annals-Former-World-John-McPhee/dp/0374518734

It's a re-compiled volume of all of his essays on geology, mostly traveling around in the company of geologists.  This passage is one of many that is just so enjoyable. This one describing how geologists like Eldridge Moores keep an eye out for road cuts:

"At work or play, a geologist always drives like Egyptian painting- eyes to the side."

Highly recommended.

[Probeman]

I've only read 1/3 of the 1998 book "Through a Universe Darkly - A cosmic tale of ancient ethers, dark matter and the fate of the universe" by Marcia Bartusiak, but still I have to recommend it as an excellent history of astronomy, atomic physics and how the two came together to create the science of what today we call astrophysics.

As spectroscopists I'm sure we can all appreciate how early observations of emission and absorption lines finally yielded the composition of steller objects, which at one time was summed up by Auguste Comte in his infamous statement: "men will never encompass in their conceptions the whole of the stars".

Possibly because the first evidence for the composition of stars came from woman, such as Cecilia Payne-Goposchkin who initially reported that although many terrestrial elements appeared to be present in solar emissions, her calculations showed that hydrogen and helium were vastly more abundant that the heavier elements. However, since the prevailing view at that time was that the sun and planets shared a similar composition, no one believed her...

A great read on the history of astronomy and astrophysics!

[sem-geologist]

As proponent of Open source Software and Hardware I got particularly excited when spot this new journal HardwareX. And now something what makes me particular to joy. An article showing how to make a BSE detector for under 100EU:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468067223000202

Well it is not clear how long this marvel would keep functioning (although OEM detectors gets contaminated in few years too). Albeit, if there would be an option to spend 100€/year to bring back the clear BSE image vs $$$$$/10 years to do that... the optional option I think would be obvious. I.e. we had in last few years to replace few BSE detectors in our lab. One on our ZEISS SEM (7 years old- pitchblack) and one on SX100 (20 years old) - those cost us a fortune and few kidneys.

Anyway, I like the journal HardwareX's article highlights: among common article information it has the prototype price included and software, firmware, hardware licenses.

[Probeman]

Our colleague Andrew Locock in the news:

https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2022/11/new-minerals-discovered-in-massive-meteorite-may-reveal-clues-to-asteroid-formation.html

[Probeman]

Not a whole lot to do with EPMA, but technology in general, The Coming Wave by M. Suleyman is highly recommended reading.  The exponential growth of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology is coming and faster than we think. Here is a historical technology event from the book that is a bit more than just a metaphor for us in the next 5 to 10 years:

"In 1830, the first passenger railway opened between Liverpool and Manchester. Building this marvel of engineering had required an act of parliament. The route needed cut-throughs, elevated sections over boggy ground and settling of seemingly endless property disputes: all titanic challenges. The railway’s opening was attended by dignitaries, including the Prime Minister and Liverpool‘s MP William Huskisson. During the celebration the crowd stood on the tracks to welcome the new marvel as it approached. So unfamiliar was the striking machine that people failed to appreciate the speed of the oncoming train and Huskisson himself was killed under the locomotive’s wheels."

https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Wave-Technology-Twenty-first-Centurys-ebook/dp/B0BSKW45KB

[Probeman]

Talagrand focused on processes whose outcomes are distributed according to a bell-shaped curve called a Gaussian. Such distributions are common in nature and have a number of desirable mathematical properties. He wanted to know what can be said with certainty about extreme outcomes in these situations. So he proved a set of inequalities that put tight upper and lower bounds on possible outcomes. “To obtain a good inequality is a piece of art,” Holden said. That art is useful: Talagrand’s methods can give an optimal estimate of, say, the highest level a river might rise to in the next 10 years, or the magnitude of the strongest potential earthquake.

When we’re dealing with complex, high-dimensional data, finding such maximum values can be tough.

Say you want to assess the risk of a river flooding — which will depend on factors like rainfall, wind and temperature. You can model the river’s height as a random process. Talagrand spent 15 years developing a technique called generic chaining that allowed him to create a high-dimensional geometric space related to such a random process. His method “gives you a way to read the maximum from the geometry,” Naor said.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/michel-talagrand-wins-abel-prize-for-work-wrangling-randomness-20240320/

I'm thinking how this work might be applied to EPMA, probably along the lines that Nicholas Ritchie did some time ago:

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac301843h

and more recently:

Ritchie, Nicholas WM. "Embracing Uncertainty: Modeling Uncertainty in EPMA—Part II." Microscopy and Microanalysis 27.1 (2021): 74-89.