Monday, November 7, 2011

Top Institutions Publishing In Nature - 2010

Below is a list of the top universities and institutions based on their publishing record in the journal ‘Nature’.  The ranking is simply based on the number of articles published in 2010 with one or more author affiliations to their institution.

1.   Harvard - 81
2.   Max Planck – 75
3.   C.N.R.S. – 57
4.   Stanford – 42
5.   N.I.H. – 40
6.   Caltech – 33
7.   Univ. Washington – 32
8.   U.C. San Francisco – 31
8.   U.C. Berkeley – 31
10. U.C.L.A. – 30
11. M.I.T. – 28
12. Cambridge – 27
13. Yale – 26
14. Oxford – 25
15. Columbia – 22
15. Univ. Tokyo – 22
18. N.Y.U. – 21
18. Washington Univ. – 21
20. Univ. Michigan – 20
20. Johns Hopkins – 20
20. Univ. Toronto – 20
20. Univ. Chicago – 20
24. Imperial Coll – 19
25. U.C. San Diego – 18
25. Maryland – 18
25. U. Penn.
29. LBL – 15
30. Univ. London – 14
31. RIKEN – 13
31. U.N.C. – 13
31. U.B.C. – 13
35. Cornell – 12
35. Duke – 12
35. Wisc – 12
35. U.C. Davis – 12
35. Northwestern – 12

Honorable Mentions:
*    Carnegie Mellon - 11
*    SCRIPPS – 11
*    U.C. Boulder – 9
*    Osaka – 8
*    Purdue – 8
*    U.C. Santa Barbara – 5
*    Gatech – 4

This report is partly in response to the Nature Publishing Index, which includes and weights equally, Nature sub-field journals.  While simply indexing the number of Nature publications already misrepresents the impact a university has on science, I feel that including the Nature sister journals exacerbates the problem.  While, Nature and Science sit at the top of the food-chain for non-field specific publications, the same cannot be said for the Nature field specific journals.  Including these smaller Nature publications in the index discourages publications in alternative, often better, field specific journals by rewarding people who have a thirst for the Nature name.  We may understand the vain desire for Nature regardless of its form, but let’s not offer any additional reward.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Surfactant Ligand Removal and Rational Fabrication of Inorganically Connected Quantum Dots


http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl202892p

A novel method is reported to create inorganically connected nanocrystal (NC) assemblies for both II–VI and IV–VI semiconductors by removing surfactant ligands using (NH4)2S. This surface modification process differs from ligand exchange methods in that no new surfactant ligands are introduced and the post-treated NC surfaces are nearly bare. The detailed mechanism study shows that the high reactivity between (NH4)2S and metal–surfactant ligand complexes enables the complete removal of surfactant ligands in seconds and converts the NC metal-rich shells into metal sulfides. The post-treated NCs are connected through metal–sulfide bonding and form a larger NCs film assembly, while still maintaining quantum confinement. Such “connected but confined” NC assemblies are promising new materials for electronic and optoelectronic devices.



DOI: 10.1021/nl202892p
Publication Date (Web): October 19, 2011

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Value Density of US Coins

A coin machine breaks open and you have to fill your pockets with coins. There are piles of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. Which coins do you start grabbing? Well, assuming you have a good belt to keep your pants up, you want to pick the coin with the largest value density. What I mean by that is, you want the coin that has the most value for its given volume. That way you can fit the most money into your pockets. Although I suspected the dime and the quarter were great candidates, I wasn't sure which coin would win. So I ran the numbers.

The dimensions of the coins are readily available, and assuming they are cylinders, the volumes are easily calculated to be: quarter - 4.74, dime - 2.52, nickel - 3.53, and penny 2.85 (cm^3). The value densities are therefore: quarter - 5.28, dime - 3.97, nickel - 1.42 and penny - 0.35 (cents / cm^3).

So in conclusion, fill your pockets with quarters. You will be able to hold 33% more money than the guy grabbing dimes. And the guy grabbing pennies is completely out of his mind, unless the quarters are pre-1982 and he fully understands the value of copper - I still recommend quarters.

If we have the option taking half dollar or the current dollar coins, then grab those. Their volumes are: dollar - 5.51 and half dollar - 7.36 (cm^3). Their value densities are: dollar - 18.14 and 6.80 - half dollar (cents / cm^3). However since these two coins are not that common, we will consider such a hypothetical opportunity to be unrealistic.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Accessing Journals in Papers2 via Cornell Proxy

Papers2 is a fairly nice way to manage your scientific articles. At least nice enough for me to purchase, although I am not convinced it is vastly superior to the cross-platform alternatives like Zotero and Mendeley. Nonetheless, it has become my software of choice for the moment.

My library institution is Cornell University and accessing articles off campus requires circumventing the pay-wall via a proxy. I spent the time figuring out how to do this from within Papers via the Cornell proxy. Unfortunately, this guide will reach a small audience and may be redundant with information already on the internet - however, I would have found it very useful two hours ago.

So, to get Papers2 setup for the Cornell system,

go to: File -> Preferences

Then select the "Access" menu:

Select Cornell University from the dropdown menu:

Lastly, and most importantly, you will need to specify Cornell's proxy in the region circled below:

In the circled region put: http://proxy.library.cornell.edu

You will now be able to access MOST journal services and articles. Note that Web of Science will probably not work, so you will need to locate your journals through other services such as Google Scholar, PubMed, IEEExplore, etc.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Extended Depth of Field for High-Resolution Scanning Transmission Electron


Extended Depth of Field for High-Resolution Scanning Transmission Electron Microscopy

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

The Daily Cross Hatch

The Daily Cross Hatch, a web blog dedicated to alternative comics, has posted a web comic which I jointly created with Rob Barton and Phil Ashworth.

Article at The Daily Crosshatch

Phil Ashworth's Blooooooooggg