Category: science&culture

Links

Some links collected over the last months.

I will be at the ISCPAC 2016 meeting next week. In case you are also there, meet up:-)

[2016-06-07 Some Updates in the afternoon;-)]

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Links

Some links I found interesting since the last time… partly older stuff, though.

Again Links Only

Although I hope I can post something more substantial next week, but do not want to promise what I may not be able to keep…

Organic solar cells:

Science Management and Marketing:

Other Stuff:

German physical society (DPG) spring meeting in Berlin is still ongoing, although I had to leave already. 6000 (mostly german) physicists on the TU Berlin Campus, nice place to be!

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Links

and nothing else.

Photovoltaics:

Global warming:

  • Climate sceptics on the go, via /.: Don’t Worry About Global Warming, Say 16 Scientists in the WSJ; I am no climate scientist, but what I read usually points in the other direction… at least judging from most scientists with peer reviewed publications in contrast to non-peer reviewed “scientists”. Nevertheless, the scientists cited above seem to be real ones, although (mostly?) not with scientific background related to the global climate
  • we have a similar discussion here in Germany, with RWE manager Fritz Vahrenholt writing a book trying to confute evidence of global warming, relating any temperature change to the solar activity: summary by Die Zeit (german, google translate) and an article (again Die Zeit) by Toralf Staud, refuting the seven main theses of Vahrenholt ( german, google translate).

Other stuff:

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This and that

Kid is growing, lack of sleep makes euphoric, but less time is less time;-)

The 2010 impact factors were just released by Thomson Reuters, Sunset at Ammerseeas most of you will know due to the mails sent by almost all publishers to tell about recent boosts of impact for their journals. A sober post was written by Jörg Heber, editor of Nature materials. A brief quote

So what use is the impact factor number? Well, being cynical one could say it is a quick measure for those that don’t read the journals but still want to know how good they are on average. The danger is of course that this is then used as a kind of metric to assess the quality of research or to decide on the career of researchers.

Continue reading “This and that”

Publish like a pro

Today, I saw the article Publish like a pro by Kendall Powell in Nature. Some tips on how to write:

  • You are only as good as your last paper – previous success does not guarantee future acceptance.Walking to Schloss Burg
  • You’ve got to hook the editor with the abstract.
  • Don’t delete those files. Keep every version. You never know what aspect you can use for some other piece of writing.
  • Writing is an amazingly long learning curve. many authors say that they’re still getting better as a writer after several decades.
  • The most significant work is improved by subtraction. Keeping the clutter away allows a central message to be communicated with a broader impact.
  • Write every day if possible.
  • once you’ve written what you wanted to convey, end it there.

These go hand in hand with this earlier post, although Kendall’s article does not stop there. Therefore, read it!

Personally, what I need for writing is a quiet, non-distracting environment with the internet switched off.

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MRS Spring Meeting 2010… already over

Last week, the MRS Spring Meeting took place in San Francisco. It was my first time there, but certainly not the last! ruffled feathersI enjoyed it immensely, despite my extensive last minute preparations of the talk I was invited to give… another first timer for me (on an international conference). In case you are interested, find the slides on scribd. Prof. Venkateswara Bommisetty, one of the organisers of the GG symposium told me that the slides of invited talks will also be made available (if the authors agree).

Many interesting talks, too many to go into more detail in the given time!;-) Anyway, it was nice to meet Alex (glidera) and his colleague Bertrand in person, and spend time with Andy B and Tom!

It was difficult (if not impossible) to agree with Alan Heeger and Robert Street on their propositions that monomolecular recombination is the limiting factor for organic bulk heterojunction solar cells at short circuit current under one sun illumination. Thus, despite both of them being well-known and highly respected, I allow myself to express my strong belief (supported by transient experiments and macroscopic simulations;-) that bimolecular polaron recombination is the dominant loss mechanism for free polarons, instead of monomolecular polaron recombination. Maybe more on this later.

During the conference, and featured in the talk of Karl Leo, Heliatek announced another efficiency record for small molecule solar cells, enhancing their recent achievements to now 7.7% certified efficiency for a tandem cell with 1.1cm2. Again, my congratulations, great stuff!
Continue reading “MRS Spring Meeting 2010… already over”

Publications – Wind of change?

Via Die Zeit and Nature:
The DFG, Germany’s main funding agency, just put down new guidelines for proposals. Starting in July, the proposals should contain only two directly relevant publications per year of requested funding, as well as up to five other papers (presumably the most important ones) covering the researcher’s general background. Matthias Kleiner, DFG president:

It is quality, not quantity, which matters.

Good point. Nevertheless, although the publish and perish mentality lately became quite tiring, I wonder if (how quickly) these new conditions will change the mentality of the researchers in general, and in particular the ones who are reviewing the proposals and are sitting in the committees for professorship appointment;-)

[Update 25.2.2010] Find the original DFG statement here (pdf, german).

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How to publish… not so seriously

Great comical contribution of Jorge Cham’s PhD Comics: ButterflyNature vs Science

The Nature Journal liked it, as apparent from their blog post;-) According to Jorge Cham, their general comment was:

Use this comic for procrastination or decompression, as you see fit.

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How to publish… seriously

Less sad than the recent Note on publishing a scientific comment… Golden GateAs I am in a constant process of trying to understand the requirements for publishing high-impact scientific papers better (slow process… ;-), I am always eager to see what others write about it.

Recently, I linked to some PLOS editorials about Ten simple rules for nearly everything, including writing papers.

Along this line, the presentation given by the Phys. Rev. Lett. Editor Manolis Antonoyiannakis in Japan end of last year, is very interesting. In addition to hints for using the right phrasing when writing about scientific results, he also gives some insight – from the viewpoint of the Editorial Office of a high impact phyics journal – into the inner workings of paper predecision (by Editor) and general acceptance rate. Continue reading “How to publish… seriously”