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Pamela finds anti-matter in the Van Allen belt

August 9, 2011

I had no difficulty as a student and later as an engineer in using  imaginary and complex numbers  involving i, where

i 2 = −1

and I am reasonably confident that I grasp the general concept of imaginary numbers. It took me a while when I was a student to realise that “imaginary” here meant “being capable of being imagined” and not something that ” did not exist and could only be imagined”.

I have much greater difficulty in following the concepts of “anti-matter” and why it is rational and necessary that anti-matter must exist. But I am no high energy physicist. On the other hand, I have no difficulty in “imagining” an alternative universe composed of anti-matter subject to anti-gravity, lit up with anti-light and which presumably began with an anti-Big Bang (an implosion)! But why anti-matter must exist in our universe is something I am content to leave to physicists. But like black holes they make me vaguely uncomfortable and I suppose it’s a good thing that anti-matter does not exist naturally on the earth’s surface. Of course if the physicists could suggest how I could use anti-matter to annihilate about 20kgs of my mass I would sign on immediately!

Anti-matter

The modern theory of antimatter begins in 1928, with a paper by Paul Dirac. Dirac realised that his relativistic version of the Schrödinger wave equation for electrons predicted the possibility of antielectrons. These were discovered by Carl D. Anderson in 1932 and named positrons (a contraction of “positive electrons”). Although Dirac did not himself use the term antimatter, its use follows on naturally enough from antielectrons, antiprotons, etc.A complete periodic table of antimatter was envisaged by Charles Janet in 1929.

Antimatter cannot be stored in a container made of ordinary matter because antimatter reacts with any matter it touches, annihilating itself and an equal amount of the container. Antimatter that is composed of charged particles can be contained by a combination of an electric field and a magnetic field in a device known as a Penning trap.

In any case, when cosmic rays smash into molecules in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, a shower of smaller particles is created. Physicists have assumed that a small number of those resulting particles will be anti-protons. Most of those will be instantly annihilated when they collide with particles of ordinary matter. But those which don’t collide should get trapped in the Earth’s torus-shaped Van Allen radiation belt, and form a layer of antimatter in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Van Allen radiation belts : image stars.astro.illinois.edu

Wired reports on the paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters –  The discovery of geomagnetically trapped cosmic ray antiprotons bu O. Adriani et al. 2011 ApJ 737 L29 doi: 10.1088/2041-8205/737/2/L29

Data from the cosmic ray satellite PAMELA has added substantial weight to the theory that the Earth is encircled by a thin band of antimatter. The satellite, named Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics, was launched in 2006 to study the nature of cosmic rays — high-energy particles from the Sun and beyond the solar system which barrel into Earth.  ……

It was one of PAMELA’s goals to hunt out those tiny numbers of antimatter particles among the ludicrously more abundant normal matter particles, like protons and the nuclei of helium atoms. To find them, the satellite regularly moved through a particularly dense section of the Van Allen belt called the South Atlantic Anomaly. Over a period of 850 days — from July 2006 to December 2008 — sensors aboard PAMELA detected 28 anti-protons. That might not sound like much, but it’s three times more than would be found from a random sample of the solar wind, and is the most abundant source of anti-protons ever seen near the Earth.

But what does this discovery mean, other than proving that a bunch of theorizing physicists were correct? The discovery opens the doors to harnessing those anti-protons for a variety of medical, sensing and, most importantly, rocket-propelling applications.

In a 2006 NASA-founded study by Draper Laboratory, researchers wrote, “it has been suggested that tens of nanograms to micrograms of anti-protons can be used to catalyze nuclear reactions and propel spacecraft to velocities up to 100 km/sec.”

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Posted in Physics, Science, Space | Comments Off on Pamela finds anti-matter in the Van Allen belt

Kalasalingam University takes action against misconduct: head of department and 6 PhD students sacked

August 7, 2011

The Sangiliyandi Gurunathan and Kalasalingam University story was covered by earlier posts here and here.

I have today received replies from the University and from the Society of Scientific Values reporting on the actions already taken. The head of Department – Sangiliyandi Gurunathan – had been instructed to and has resigned. Four students registered for a PhD have had their registrations cancelled. Pending PhD registrations for two further students have also been cancelled.

This is a remarkable, speedy and very commendable response from the Vice Chancellor Dr. S Radhakrishnan. In the Indian context (and perhaps in the context of any University) the speed and decisiveness is unprecedented and it gives me hope for the future of ethical and academic standards at Indian Universities.

Press Release (pdf)  Kalasalingam release 

The replies from Dr. Radhakrishnan, Vice Chancellor and from Prof. Chopra of the Society of Scientific Values to the mail I had sent to Chopra (copied to Radhakrishnan) follow:

date Sun, Aug 7, 2011 at 8:13 AM
subject Re: Action taken by Kalasalingam University

Dear Sir, 
Please refer the attached pdf file  regarding the action taken against Dr. G. Sangliyandi and the research scholars who are found to be involved in scientific misconduct (Image manipulation and the potential of scientific fraud) 
Thanking you for bringing this issue to our notice immediately. 

With Regards 
Dr. S. Radhakrishnan
Vice-Chancellor
Kalasalingam University
Krishnankoil – 626 126
Tamilnadu INDIA 

From SSV copied to me

Dear Prof Radhakrishnan:

On behalf of the Society for Scientific Values (SSV), I wish to thank you and congratulate you  on taking a right and an exemplary decision on unethical  practices by your colleague and students. We will post this news on our website as also in our next News&Views.  Very rarely do VCs take such strong and correct action as you have done.
SSV will be very happy to join hands with your faculty colleagues to organise  one day  seminar on Ethical Values for S&T at your University at a mutually convenient date. Please do let me know.
Best wishes
Prof (Dr) K. L. Chopra (Padamshri)
FNA, FASc, FNASc, FNAE, D.Sc.(hc)
(Former Director, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur)
President, Society for Scientific Values

date Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 9:32 PM
subject Wholesale retractions of papers at Kalasalingam University

Dear Professor Chopra,

You will be aware of the wholesale findings of image manipulation in at least 8 papers from the Biotechnology Department of Kalasalingam University. Sangiliyandi Gurunathan is the primary investigator on these papers and the list of retracted papers which bear his name is now getting very long.

There seem to be two issues here: 
  1. the widespread manipulation of images and plagiarism by doctoral  students, and
  2. the lack of leadership and supervision which seems to encourage such   scientific misconduct. 
I draw your attention to:
Retraction Watch – Angiogenesis retracts two papers, cites image manipulation in eight, as PI blames unethical students
ktwop blog – At least 8 more papers from biotechnology department at Kalasalingam University manipulated as 2 are retracted.
I would hope that the Society for Scientific Values could conduct an investigation because something is seriously amiss at this university.
I have also copied this to Dr. S Radhakrisnan, Vice Chancellor since I have corresponded with him earlier (February 2011) about the earlier retraction of Sangiliyandi Gurunathan’s paper. 
best regards
(ktwop)

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Posted in Ethics, India, Science, scientific misconduct | 6 Comments »

Carbon dioxide follows temperature – what else?

August 6, 2011

The lecture given by  at the Sydney Institute is causing waves and he has a new paper in the works. Professor Murry Salby is Chair of Climate Science at Macquarie University. He’s been a visiting professor at Paris, Stockholm, Jerusalem, and Kyoto and has been deputed to the Bureau of Meterology in Australia.

Jo Nova reports that Salby was once an IPCC reviewer, and he comments, damningly, that if these results had been available in 2007, “the IPCC could not have drawn the conclusion that it did.” After speaking in carefully selected phrases, he  finished his presentation saying that “anyone who thinks the science is settled on this topic, is in fantasia”.

His talk is available here:  “Global Emission of Carbon Dioxide: The Contribution from Natural Sources”

“It’s not just that man-made emissions don’t control the climate, they don’t even control global CO2 levels”.

article image

CO2 variations do not correlate with man-made emissions. Peaks and falls correlate with hot years (e.g. 1998) and cold years (1991-92). No graphs are available from Salby's speech or paper yet. This graph comes from Tom Quirk's related work.: image via joannenova.com.au

Jo Nova posts a comprehensive report.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Science | 2 Comments »

A rash of rescinded PhD’s as German Universities clean house

August 6, 2011

Some good may be coming out of the zu Guttenberg affaire.

Many PhD thesis awarded – mainly to politicians – by German Universities are now under investigation and the initiative is coming from the media and on-line websites. The apparent speed with which the Universities are moving is – I think – unprecedented. It is also a tribute to the power of the internet for change (not forgetting the misuse of that power as evidenced by the “hate-sites” and the Norway massacre). But the Universities themselves rarely investigate without external pressure and some measure of scandal. And as Gerard Fröhlich points out scientific “cheaters” usually have venerable establishment figures as their protectors.

Gerhard Fröhlich, University of Linz, from an interview in the online Journal of Unsolved Questions:

Self control mechanisms are a myth in science ( and just) to avoid any serious external control. I have studied all fraud affairs precisely and in almost every case anonymous allegations coupled with mass media outrage – in most recent years with an interim period of outrage on the internet – were necessary before the institutions themselves agreed to take action. Science and its sponsors, media and politics, everybody wants heros, “Uebermenschen”. The lion’s share of uncovered scientific cheaters were supermen or superwomen, shooting stars in their field, decorated with honors and predicted to win the Nobel Prize.

In every case, though, an elderly gentleman held his protective hand over them to award them an official seal of scientific credibility.

Prof. Debora Weber-Wulff summarises the status of the various actions /investigations ongoing at German Universities.  From Prof. Debora Weber-Wulff’s blog:

The media barrage has not let up, as there are new candidates up every few days. So here is my modest attempt to get you up to date:

  • Mathematics professor at the University of Potsdam censured
    This blog reported in May 2010 on the plagiarism dispute between Gumm and Denecke. The University of Potsdam has just revoked the rights that the now-retired Denecke had to still supervise dissertations, and he is to remove the publication from his CV, and withdraw the book from the market.
  • Veronica Sass
    Doctorate rescinded by the University of Konstanz
  • Matthias Pröfrock
    Doctorate rescinded by the University of Tübingen
  • Silvana Koch-Mehrin
    Doctorate rescinded by the University of Heidelberg, she has legally challenged the decision
  • Georgios Chatzimarkakis
    Doctorate rescinded by the University of Bonn
  • Bijan Djir-Sarai
    Plagiarism level is currently at 60% of the pages, the University of Cologne is investigating
  • Uwe Brinkmann
    Doctorate rescinded by the University of Hamburg
  • Margarita Mathiopoulos
    Plagiarism level is currently at 46 % of the pages, the University of Bonn is investigating
  • Siegfried Haller
    Plagiarism level is currently at 21 % of the pages, the University of Halle-Wittenberg is investigating
  • Jürgen Goldschmidt
    is the most recent member of the club, clocking in at a plagiarism level of 10% of the pages, the Technical University of Berlin is investigating. The entire nation is having a good laugh at his footnoting technique, which includes “Tagesschau vom 02.12.2004” (on page 42 of the dissertation), “WDR vom 24.03.2007” (on page 51), and best of all “Super Illu 17/2005” (on page 45). SUPERillu is a weekly family magazine often read in Eastern Germany, leading Spiegel Online to headline “Magna cum Super-Illu“. Mr. Goldschmidt tried to delete two sites that he runs on the topic of his dissertation, as they contained the sources for some of the plagiarism. Luckily, the Internet Archive had kept a copy for posterity.
  • Bernd Althusmann
    The weekly newspaper Die Zeit hired investigators to look into the dissertation of the minister of education of Lower Saxony, currently the speaker for the national committee on education. The calls for him to step down are getting louder and louder.
  • Roland Wöller
    The dissertation of the minister of education from Saxony was investigated in 2008, when it was determined that he had incorporated large portions of a master’s thesis by another student into his work without proper attribution. The University of Dresden sent him a sharp letter reprimanding him and requesting that he “fix the footnotes” for future editions of the book, but they did not rescind his dissertation at the time. The thesis is being re-investigated by people outside of VroniPlag. Update: The media is trying to make a scandal out of this, as there is nothing else to report on. Flurfunk debunks the scandal.

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Posted in Ethics, Germany, Science, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »

Global Warming has “paused” and climate change forecasts are “flawed”

August 6, 2011

The Times They Are a-changin’

1. The UK Met Office is an ardent follower of the Global Warming Doctrine but even they have had to now admit that global warming has “paused”.

“Two research papers shed new light on why the upper layers of the world’s oceans have seen a recent pause in warming despite continued increases in greenhouse gases.”

But the religion of global warming need not worry. The pause is – conveniently – only due to “natural variability”. The Met Office does however admit that the science is a long way from being settled and that with more measurements (and perhaps with a little less slavish acceptance of model results) “it would be possible to account for movement of heat within the ocean and do a better job of monitoring future climate change”.  One can hope that they may be returning to a science based on observations leading to models leading to further measurements to validate the models , but religions are not cast aside so easily! 

The independent studies from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) and the Met Office show how natural climate variability can temporarily mask longer-term trends in upper ocean heat content and sea surface temperature.

The upper 700 metres of the global ocean has seen a rise in temperature since reliable records began in the late 1960s. However, there has been a pause in this warming during the period from 2003 to 2010. The papers published this week offer explanations for this.

Climate model simulations from KNMI show that such pauses in upper ocean warming occur regularly as part of the climate system’s natural variability. … A different set of model simulations from the Met Office supports the idea of heat moving to the deeper ocean explaining the recent pause in upper ocean warming.

The same research also suggests that with deeper ocean observations it would be possible to account for movement of heat within the ocean and do a better job of monitoring future climate change.

GRL website (KNMI paper)(Katsman, C.A. and G.J. van Oldenborgh)

GRL website (Met Office paper) (Palmer, M. D., D. J. McNeall, and N. J. Dunstone)

2. In the meantime a study at Lancaster University charges that “inaccurate climate forecasts costs the world considerable money” and “the overwhelming focus on limiting green house gases alone may well be mis-guided”.

​Climate change forecasts used to set policy and billions of pounds in investment are flawed, according to new research from Lancaster University Management School (LUMS).

Complex climate models have been used by scientists to reach a consensus (through the International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC) of global warming of 0.2 °C per decade. But this fundamental finding for governments and the global population continues to be fiercely contested by sceptics of the role of human activity in climate change. The competing interest groups involved have led to a decline in confidence generally in the wake of claims of manipulated data from the University of East Anglia, and incorrect projections – such as Himalayan glaciers disappearing by 2035 .

The new study by Robert Fildes and Nikolaos Kourentzes at the Lancaster Centre for Forecasting applies the latest thinking on forecasting to the work of climate change scientists, in a bid to make 10 and 20 year ahead climate predictions more accurate and trustworthy for policy-makers, and help address growing doubts over the realities of climate change. Such decadal forecasts have the most relevance to current thinking and policy plans and if they are to be credible and useful, they need to demonstrate their accuracy.  But the forecasts produced by the current models do not achieve this.

The authors set out a new basis for ‘decadal’ forecasting which is to be a major component of the next IPCC assessment report. Using a combination of models, with statistical  benchmarking as checks,  current forecasts prove almost certainly less accurate than they could be. Inaccurate climate forecasts costs the world considerable money. The implication is that the climate modelling community needs to open up its research agenda. As yet it has not demonstrated that it can produce better forecasts than simpler statistical methods. A consequence of this, explored by Fildes and Kourentzes, is that the overwhelming focus on limiting green house gases alone may well be mis-guided. The hydrologist Keith Beven’s work on modelling carried out in the Lancaster Environment Centre leads to the same conclusion. In short, eclectic forecasting methods and a wide range of policy responses are what is needed if we are to overcome the problems of emerging warming. 


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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Science | 1 Comment »

Antarctic sea ice is increasing and rate of increase is accelerating

August 4, 2011

An instance of actual measurements over the last 30 years rather than just model results. Overall, sea ice extent is increasing in the Antarctic, contrary to climate model predictions for the 21st century, and this increase is accelerating and has strong regional and seasonal signatures.

A new paper in Climate Dynamics, DOI: 10.1007/s00382-011-1143-9 

(H/T The Hockey Schtick)

Sea Ice Trends in the Antarctic and Their Relationship to Surface Air Temperature during 1979 to 2009 by Qi Shu, Fangli Qiao, Zhenya Song and Chunzai Wang

Sea ice trends in the Antarctic and their relationship to surface air temperature during 1979–2009

Abstract: 

Surface air temperature (SAT) from four reanalysis/analysis datasets are analyzed and compared with the observed SAT from 11 stations in the Antarctic. It is found that the SAT variation from Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is the best to represent the observed SAT. Then we use the sea ice concentration (SIC) data from satellite measurements, the SAT data from the GISS dataset and station observations to examine the trends and variations of sea ice and SAT in the Antarctic during 1979–2009. The Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) shows an increased trend during 1979–2009, with a trend rate of 1.36 ± 0.43% per decade. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition analysis shows that the rate of the increased trend has been accelerating in the past decade. Antarctic SIE trend depends on the season, with the maximum increase occurring in autumn. If the relationship between SIC and GISS SAT trends is examined regionally, Antarctic SIC trends agree well with the local SAT trends in the most Antarctic regions. That is, Antarctic SIC and SAT show an inverse relationship: a cooling (warming) SAT trend is associated with an upward (downward) SIC trend. It is also concluded that the relationship between sea ice and SAT trends in the Antarctic should be examined regionally rather than integrally.

As put by Skeptical Science – “The most common misconception regarding Antarctic sea ice is that sea ice is increasing because it’s cooling around Antarctica. The reality is the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica has shown strong warming over the same period that sea ice has been increasing. Globally from 1955 to 1995, oceans have been warming at 0.1°C per decade. In contrast, the Southern Ocean (specifically the region where Antarctic sea ice forms) has been warming at 0.17°C per decade. Not only is the Southern Ocean warming, it’s warming faster than the global trend. This warming trend is apparent in satellite measurements of temperature trends over Antarctica”.

Antarctic Climate and Sea Ice Variability – a Brief Review by Marilyn Raphael, UCLA Geography, WRCP Workshop on Seasonal to MultiDecadal Predictability of Polar Climate, October 2010

ABSTRACT

Antarctica’s remoteness, the difficulty of conducting research there and the paucity of observations, are some reasons why the Antarctic climate and sea ice variability are not as well understood as in the Arctic. However, research has shown that the climate of Antarctica including its sea ice is dictated by numerous influences with origins ranging from the Tropics to local atmosphere/surface interactions. Over the period of record indications are that much of Antarctica is warming, led by the Antarctic Peninsula. Regional changes in atmospheric circulation, sea surface temperatures and sea ice may explain this warming. Overall, sea ice extent is increasing, contrary to climate model predictions for the 21st century, and this increase has strong regional and seasonal signatures. Sea ice variability is strongly influenced by ENSO, Southern Hemisphere Annular Mode (SAM) and by zonal wave three (ZW3) among other large scale atmospheric circulation mechanisms. The Antarctic climate and sea ice variability are reviewed with respect to the atmospheric and oceanic mechanisms that influence them.

 

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Posted in Antarctic, Climate, Science | Comments Off on Antarctic sea ice is increasing and rate of increase is accelerating

Medical ghostwriters and scientists guilty of misconduct should be liable

August 3, 2011

I have long thought that scientific publications (and scientific endeavour in general) cannot be exempt from liability for scientific misconduct – at least a civil liability even if  any criminal liability would depend upon the extent of any fraud involved in a publication or in the performance of scientific activity. The liability would obviously start with the scientists/authors but the entire publishing chain including reviewers, editors and publishers and those who commission the science or the ghost writing must carry their share of responsibility and cannot be exempt.

In a scientific context I think ghostwriting – of itself – is tantamount to fraud.

Why cannot a concept of tort or “product liability”apply to scientists?  

It seems to me that the concept of tort or “product liability” should be applicable to the work of scientists and researchers where their work is the result of faking data, fraud or other misconduct since it would be work that “had not been done in good faith”. Tort would apply because the ramifications of their misconduct would extend far beyond their employment contracts with their employers.

Ghostwriting and guest authoring in industry-controlled research raise “serious ethical and legal concerns, bearing on integrity of medical research and scientific evidence used in legal disputes,”  say two University of Toronto law professors:

Legal Remedies for Medical Ghostwriting: Imposing Fraud Liability on Guest Authors of Ghostwritten Articles

by Simon Stern, Trudo Lemmens PLoS Med 8(8): e1001070. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001070

Summary Points

  • Ghostwriting of medical journal articles raises serious ethical and legal concerns, bearing on the integrity of medical research and scientific evidence used in legal disputes.
  • Medical journals, academic institutions, and professional disciplinary bodies have thus far failed to enforce effective sanctions.
  • The practice of ghostwriting could be deterred more effectively through the imposition of legal liability on the “guest authors” who lend their names to ghostwritten articles.
  • We argue that a guest author’s claim for credit of an article written by someone else constitutes legal fraud, and may give rise to claims that could be pursued in a class action based on the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
  • The same fraud could support claims of “fraud on the court” against a pharmaceutical company that has used ghostwritten articles in litigation. This claim also appropriately reflects the negative impact of ghostwriting on the legal system.

CTV News says:

Academics who lend their names to medical and scientific articles that they didn’t actually write are doing little more than prostituting themselves, according to two law professors at the University of Toronto. …. 

Academic ghostwriting is a little-known practice that finally came to the public’s attention after some popular drugs like the now-discontinued painkiller Vioxx started showing serious problems.

Lawsuits revealed that studies that suggested the drugs were safe and effective were often not written by the scientists listed as the authors. Instead, they were ghostwritten by writers working for the drug companies that make the medications. The scientists listed as authors were offered payment in return for attaching their names.

The problem of course is that doctors rely on information in the medical literature to make treatment decisions. That’s when “ghostwritten” articles can have devastating effects: by swaying doctors to give patients improper and even harmful treatment. ….

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Posted in Ethics, Fraud, Medicine, Science, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | 3 Comments »

Bengü Sezen – A “Master of Fraud” at Columbia University

August 2, 2011

The case of fraud by Bengü Sezen a chemist at Columbia University goes back many years and was a scandal in 2007 and briefly reported back in December 2010 by Retraction Watch.

Bengu Sezen

Further details have now emerged from the Office of Research Integrity and are put together by Chemical and Engineering News which  “show a massive and sustained effort by Sezen over the course of more than a decade to dope experiments, manipulate and falsify NMR and elemental analysis research data, and create fictitious people and organizations to vouch for the reproducibility of her results.”

A Master of Fraud (MFr) and it strikes me that she could probably have achieved great things if she had spent half as much creativity in real research as she did in duping her peers. Fraud by correction fluid in the age of photo-shopping seems particularly ingenious!!

Dalibor Sames: image njacs.org

No doubt there are extenuating circumstances but for this deception to have continued for a decade does not do any credit to her supervisor Prof. Dalibor Sames. Whether Sames has been subjected to any sanctions by the University is not clear. His role has been the subject of many posts and one “inside story” is available here.

The total number of papers retracted by Sames seems to be eight with Sezen involved in 6 of them.

C & EN carries the story:

Bizarre new details of the Bengü Sezen/Columbia University chemistry research fraud case are revealed in two lengthy reports obtained by C&EN this week from the Department of Health & Human Services. The documents—an investigative report from Columbia and HHS’s subsequent oversight findings—show a massive and sustained effort by Sezen over the course of more than a decade to dope experiments, manipulate and falsify NMR and elemental analysis research data, and create fictitious people and organizations to vouch for the reproducibility of her results. Sezen was found guilty of 21 counts of research misconduct by the federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI), which is housed at HHS, in late 2010 (C&EN, Dec. 6, 2010, page 10). A notice in the Nov. 29, 2010, Federal Register states that Sezen falsified, fabricated, and plagiarized research data in three papers and in her doctoral thesis. Some six papers that Sezen had coauthored with Columbia chemistry professor Dalibor Sames have been withdrawn by Sames because Sezen’s results could not be replicated. The ORI findings back Columbia’s own investigation.

The Sezen case began in 2000 when the young graduate student arrived in the Columbia chemistry department. “By 2002, concerns about the reproducibility of Respondent’s [Sezen’s] research were raised both by members of the [redacted] and by scientists outside” Columbia, according to the documents, obtained by C&EN through a Freedom of Information Act request. The redacted portions of the documents are meant to protect the identities of people who spoke to the misconduct investigators.

By the time Sezen received a Ph.D. degree in chemistry in 2005, under the supervision of Sames, her fraudulent activity had reached a crescendo, according to the reports. Specifically, the reports detail how Sezen logged into NMR spectrometry equipment under the name of at least one former Sames group member, then merged NMR data and used correction fluid to create fake spectra showing her desired reaction products.

The documents paint a picture of Sezen as a master of deception, a woman very much at ease with manipulating colleagues and supervisors alike to hide her fraudulent activity; a practiced liar who would defend the integrity of her research results in the face of all evidence to the contrary. Columbia has moved to revoke her Ph.D. …… 

…… After leaving Columbia, Sezen went on to receive another Ph.D. in molecular biology at Germany’s Heidelberg University. At some point during the Columbia investigation, however, Sezen vanished, though some reports place her at Turkey’s Yeditepe University. Her legacy of betrayal, observers say, remains one of the worst cases of scientific fraud ever to happen in the chemistry community.

See also

Julia Wang’s – The Sames and Sezen case, 2007

Chemical Villain of 2006: Dalibor Sames 

The Sezen Files – Part II: Unraveling the Fabrication

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Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Science, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | 4 Comments »

A nano-battery on a nano-wire

August 2, 2011

“Nano” will surely be the word of the year in science and “graphene” – I predict – will be the material of the year. No doubt the words will also be used to generate unjustified publicity in many cases. But such is the interest and the potential that the developments in nano-technology will accelerate  and it will not be long before applications are in every-day use. One of the limiting factors is the availability of energy sources at the nano-scale but even that limitation may soon be overcome.

A research team at Rice University have managed to squeeze a whole lithium-ion energy storage device into a single nanowire, which could be used as a rechargeable power source for future generations of nanoelectronics.  The work is reported in a paper published by the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters

Building Energy Storage Device on a Single Nanowire by Sanketh R. Gowda, Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, Xiaobo Zhan, and Pulickel M. Ajayan, Nano Lett., DOI: 10.1021/nl2017042, July 14, 2011

Abstract Image

Nano-wire battery

Abstract

Hybrid electrochemical energy storage devices combine the advantages of battery and supercapacitors, resulting in systems of high energy and power density. Using LiPF6electrolyte, the Ni–Sn/PANI electrochemical system, free of Li-based electrodes, works on a hybrid mechanism based on Li intercalation at the anode and PF6– doping at the cathode. Here, we also demonstrate a composite nanostructure electrochemical device with the anode (Ni–Sn) and cathode (polyaniline, PANI) nanowires packaged within conformal polymer core–shell separator. Parallel array of these nanowire devices shows reversible areal capacity of 3 μAh/cm2 at a current rate of 0.03 mA/cm2. The work shows the ultimate miniaturization possible for energy storage devices where all essential components can be engineered on a single nanowire.

From PC World:

A team of scientists has created a battery so small that it fits into a “nanowire,” a wire whose thickness is less than the wavelength of visible light. It’s the smallest battery ever made, and it could end up powering a whole generation of nanotechnology.

The potential of nanotechnology—the practice of building machines so small that they can’t even be seen—has been talked about for decades. In medicine, for example, the idea of creating tiny robots that could enter a person’s bloodstream and target intruders or diseased cells has been touted as one of the most promising applications of the field, but it’s remained purely theoretical.

One of the hurdles standing in the way of such wondrous nanodevices is their power supplies—making batteries at such a tiny scale is difficult. Now a team of engineers from Rice University appears to have solved that problem by creating a battery just 50 microns, or about the thickness of a human hair.

To create the battery (see the diagram), the researchers first coated a nanowire template with a thin layer of copper. They then filled the pores (which create the individual nanowires) halfway with a nickel/tin alloy to create the anodes. At this point, they put on a thin layer of polyethylene-oxide gel, which acts as both an electrolyte and an insulator from the other nanowires. Next they filled the remainder of the pore with a polyaniline material to create the cathodes. A layer of aluminium goes on top to complete the circuit.

Every nanowire is just 150 nanometers (nm) thin. To put that in perspective, the lowest wavelength of visible light is about 400 nm. However, the complete battery is about 50 microns tall, or about the width of human hair. The researchers ended up creating an array of nanowire batteries that was about 0.08 square inches in area, though it’s theoretically scalable to even larger sizes.

With a larger array that includes several layers stacked on top of each other, the tech could theoretically lead to batteries with massive energy density. And since the electrochemical materials don’t contain lithium, they’re easy to synthesize and manipulate at room temperature.

The nanowire batteries aren’t without their limitations, however. After being charged and discharged 20 times, they lose their ability to hold a full charge. The researchers are working on addressing this limitation, however, by playing with the polymer thickness and trying out different kinds of electrodes.

Although it’s in the early stages, the new battery technology could help usher in an era of practical nanomachines. With a real microscopic power source, the science-fiction scenario of tiny machines acting as doctors, builders, and explorers just took a step toward reality.

The team had reported last December on the creation of 3-D nano-batteries

Last December, Ajayan’s team encased vertical arrays of nickel-tin nanowires in PMMA, which is a polymer known as Plexiglas. The Plexiglas was an electrolyte and insulator in this case, and the nanowires were grown by electrodeposition in an anodized alumina template on top of a copper substrate. The template’s pores were stretched with a chemical etching technique, causing a gap between the alumina and the wires, and then the researchers drop-coated PMMA to enclose the wires with a smooth covering. The template was removed with a chemical wash, and a forest of tiny electrolyte-encased nanowires appeared. This particular battery had encased nickel-tin as the anode and a cathode had to be attached to the outside, but in the new battery packs, the cathode is packed into the nanowires.

The team created two versions of the battery pack. The first combines a nickel-tin anode, polyethylene oxide (PEO) electrolyte and polyaniline (PANI) cathode layers, which allows for the efficient movement of lithium ions through the anode to the electrolyte and the cathode. The ions are stored in bulk allowing the device to charge (and discharge) rapidly.

The second version squeezes the same characteristics into a single nanowire, with centimeter-scale arrays containing thousands of nanowire devices where each is approximately 150 nanometers wide. 

The new process uses PEO as the electrolyte, which stores lithium ions and acts as a electrical insulator between the nanowires in an array. The widened alumina pores were drop-coated with PEO to coat the anodes, and leaves tubes at the top allowing PANI cathodes to be drop-coated as well. The circuit is finished off with an aluminum current collector placed at the top of the array. 

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Perhaps there is no life on other planets

August 1, 2011

The fundamental weakness of the Drake Equation is that it starts with the assumption that life on Earth is not unique. After that it merely applies a string of probabilities to derive the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible. Fermi’s paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations (such as given by the Drake Equation) and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.

The paradox of course is resolved if there are no other such civilisations except on Earth which would be the case if life (as we know it) was unique to Earth.

It might not be what I would want to or like to believe but it is the simplest resolution of the apparent paradox. And if that is so then Drake’s equation starts with a false premise and is irrelevant and invalid. The existence of extraterrestrial life is still in the realms of belief and hope and is not (yet) science.

Now Bob Yirka of PhysOrg reports that

Astrophysicists apply new logic to downplay the probability of extraterrestrial life

David Spiegel and Edwin Turner of Princeton University have submitted a paper to arXiv that turns the Drake equation on its head. Instead of assuming that life would naturally evolve if conditions were similar to that found here on Earth, the two use Bayesian reasoning to show that just because we evolved in such conditions, doesn’t mean that the same occurrence would necessarily happen elsewhere; using evidence of our own existence doesn’t show anything they argue, other than that we are here.

…….. Spiegel and Turner point out, basing our expectations of life existing on other planets, for no better reason that it exists here, is really only proof that we are more than capable of deceiving ourselves into thinking that things are much more likely than they really are. ……

When taken at face value, some might conclude that such arguments hold no more logic than arguments for the existence of God, i.e. it’s more about faith, than science. At any rate, most would agree that the only concrete way to prove whether there is life out there or not is to prove it, by finding it.

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