Essential Skills for Scientists 2: Abstracts and summaries in a scientific paper

While marking a set of 127 student papers each containing a summary for “formative” feedback, I realised they need more guidance. The most common comment I made was to tell them to remove “I”, “me”, “my” from this type of writing. That part is easy to solve. The structure and content of a good abstract is more difficult. I have written previously about this, but there is still more to go. 

What is needed in a good scientific summary or abstract? This varies. At the undergraduate level abstracts usually need context and the more routine the analysis, the more important the presentation of the context. Within the set of papers I marked, many students wanted to measure things like fluoride, or sodium, or potassium. They selected a sample to analyse, but rarely indicated why. Consider cocoa. It turns out that cocoa contains potassium and is one of the richest dietary sources known. An assignment covering this topic should begin with something about potassium and cocoa. Potassium is a key element of diet and essential to maintaining a proper electrolyte balance. Many diets contain excessive sodium and less potassium. Cocoa powder has been reported to contain up to 4.5% potassium.

Does this context raise your interest more than a discussion of the operation of a high performance liquid chromatography column? Context will engage your reader more than will a typical approach which might be like this: “This experiment will measure fluoride with an ion selective electrode machine. A set of standards will be prepared...” Somewhere toward the end a sample will be mentioned, but the reader has lost interest. Those still reading are likely wondering, to quote my PhD supervisor, “who the hell cares?” (Read properly that should be yelled using a strong Texas accent.)

Having established the context, your reader will be ready for more. When you continue, explain the study’s goal of sampling commercially available cocoa powders and measuring potassium content using flame photometry (or ion chromatography, or inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy, or...). Your audience is prepared. 

Finish an abstract with the results and a conclusion. If you do this well, your reader will know the what, why, and how of your study as well as the results. 

Let’s see how this fits together.

Abstract: Potassium is a required nutrient and essential for maintaining a proper electrolyte balance. Many diets contain excessive sodium and insufficient potassium leading to a need to monitor dietary intake of these elements. Cocoa powder is one of the richest sources of potassium containing up to 4.5% by weight, however, little is known about variability between commercially available brands. This project sampled commercially available cocoa powders and assessed the potassium content using flame photometry following a dry ash procedure. The samples contained between 1.03% and 1.32% K by weight. Replicate analyses indicated the precision of the method was ±0.04% indicating significant differences in potassium content between brands. These results confirmed that, despite the observed variability between brands, cocoa powder is an excellent source of potassium. 

Note: The study and results provided are fictitious. Interested readers wanting to know more about potassium in cocoa powder should go here.

Make an impact: Technology and the Art of Design

Hybrid or hype. I was reading in the news on yahoo today and there was an article about hybrid cars. Go and have a look:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bw/20060411/bs_bw/bw20060407879124

If you want to get into the psyche of Americans, click on the "discuss" link at the bottom of the page. Prepare to be disturbed if you do - more on that another day.

I have to agree with the people who are not that impressed with hybrids. It depends some on what kind of driving you do. For people on a small island with lots of traffic, they make some sense. If you do lots of city driving or are in stop and go traffic alot, good hybrids are cool. But if you live somewhere with an Autobahn or freeways and like taking road trips, get something else. My Dad had a Prius. It really only did in the 45 MPG range. Not that special. For those who don't like compacts, the Prius is a decent compromise between size and fuel economy. What was special about it was that it got in the 40s pretty much no matter what he did, stop and go, sitting in traffic, driving on the highway. That is something most other cars don't do. But... for absolute best economy figures go to the web like I did... Most of these are not even particularly expensive. Now notice something, where are the American cars? They can't compete in this part of the market. If gas prices keep going up the American automobile industry will get creamed again just like they did 25-30 years ago.

MGP Highway MPG urban
70.6 43.5 Suzuki Alto
68.9 47.1 Daihatsu Charade
78.5 62.8 Smart Diesel
83.1 53.3 Citroen C1 Diesel
66.0 60.0 Honda Insight
60.1 41.5 Honda Jazz

So, if you want to have an impact on the world, design a really economical car that can make a redneck happy. If you haven't lived in the US much and need some hints on the type of people you are trying to reach, go to yahoo, read the article, and then read some of the discussion. I didn't say it would be easy but if you could increase the market share of this kind of car by 20-30% in the US market it would have an enormous impact. Huge.

Here's the challenge folks, what combination of design features and performance changes would it take to make you buy a really economical car. As you can see 40 MPG is nothing special but the Smart is a funny looking car. It doesn't do a rifle rack justice.

Man's Best Friend

If you would know a country, buy a newspaper, look in the classified ads, not for a job, for a dog. If the section for adopting or buying dogs has ads like, national kennel club registered pampered and papered purebread whatchmacallit you know something you didn't know before.

If the section has ads like, "puppies, mother Rhodesian Ridgeback - Labrador mix, father Doberman" or "Rottweiller, Doberman, Great Dane mother, Father Bull Mastiff" or "Akita Mother, Father Alsatian golden retriever mix" you also know something you did not know previuosly. One of these countries knows a thing or two about dogs, the other well... If you recognize your country in this you know what I am talking about.

As you may have guessed from the preceding, Dr. Hanley is fond of dogs. They can be very good eternally manic company. Recently I have become more fascinated by some of the other talents that dogs have in addition to being friendly companions. If you look back at the "future of science 1" post, you will notice that one thing I would like to see is someone build a detector that equals a dog's nose for sensitivity. Analytical chemistry still needs dogs for inspiration.

The things is, this is not really doing the issue justice. Dogs combine intelligence with an exquisite sense of smell to do some truly amazing tasks. For example, I was recently reading an article where a dog has been trained to recognize cancer based on the smell (presumably) of someone's breath. The ability beat most other tests, many of which were more expensive.

Another example was that persons with serious epilepsy can get seizure warning dogs. These dogs are trained to be able to (somehow?!) recognize approximately 5-10 minutes in advance that someone will be havng a siezure. Add this to seeing eye dogs for blind people and hearing ear dogs for the deaf.

Forensics scientists have been looking into bomb and drug sniffing dogs to find out what it is that clues the dogs to the presence of the items of interest. A well trained dog can do pretty well, but apparently there is some variation in the quality of training so results are somewhat varied. In this study they have found that for certain items it is impurities associated with the compounds of interest that the dogs notice not the compounds themselves.

All this in a furry package seems a bit too good to be true. When you add to that reports that pet owners live longer and that the presence of a dog in hospitals or nursing homes immediately lowers stress levels it seems to me that we need to think a little more about these animals. Don't believe me? Do a google search on "Nico the Shih-Tzu and Kolya the Great Pyrenees" and what they are doing at UCLA medical center.

I think I would feel better if my dogs stay with me next time I need to be hospitalized.

More on Resumes and CVs.

Writing a good CV or resume is a problem for many students. Having worked internationally for 9 years at times I run into problems helping students through this often agonizing process. Ever on the hunt for new sources of funding, I followed a link sent to me by a colleague and stumbled across an interesting web site.

The European Union is working hard to try to integrate a culturally diverse population that includes many countries, cultures, and languages. One of the difficulties in integrating such diversity is the issue of intra-european mobility. How can you apply for a job in another country whose customs you do not know? The EU tried to define a transnational CV format, and there is a nice website that will help you write such a CV. What is really nice about this is that there are example CVs in 13 different languages!

There are templates you can download which will help you write a Europass CV. It will be a useful exercise. One of the things I like is the emphasis on specific skills toward the end. Many students forget to include these when they go to write their first CV.

Finally, having worked in the Caribbean for several years, the approach taken by the EU in confronting some of these issues is worth studying. The english speaking Caribbean is trying to integrate into a single economy including mobility of workers. It wouldn't be a bad idea to try to define something like this for CARICOM.


Here is the link (you will need to copy and paste:
http://europass.cedefop.eu.int/europass/home/vernav/Europasss+Documents/Europass+CV/navigate.action.

Interesting Times: Gaia and James Lovelock

You may not have ever heard of him but one of the greatest scientists of our time is a man named James Lovelock. For students I have taught you may find it interesting to know that he developed the electron capture detector. I am going to focus on him today, because he is in my mind for reasons which will become clear shortly. There is another scientist associated with these ideas who also is worth writing an entry about but her work will have to wait for another day. (See if you can guess her name)

James Lovelock is a very profound thinker and was the first one to really notice that the biosphere regulates the global environment making it more hospitable for life. The concept as a whole was originally called the Gaia hypothesis. A lot of evidence has been collected supporting the idea. One way to put (this is his approach not mine) the idea in perspective is to contrast it to the idea of evolution. Evolution, though still subject to much controversy, in its classis sense says that life forms evolve under the pressure of external selection. Life forms that are well matched to their surroundings survive. Those who are less able to thrive in their environment do less well and, of course things that are hopelessly ill-adapted die. That is a simple minded way of putting evolution.

Gaia in short is about the idea of life altering its surroundings to create a hospitable environment for life to continue. The general idea is not so radical in the sense that people build houses to make life more pleasant. What is radical is the scale of the idea. I think most people would be comfortable with the idea on a local scale (houses) but might find the idea on a global scale more difficult to grasp.

Essentially, through a series of quite complex feedback loops, the biosphere has regulated global climate. The problem is that the evidence, at least to the eye of James Lovelock and others, suggests the global regulatory mechanisms are about to go out of control. This is why Lovelock is on my mind. He recently wrote an article appearing in the Independent which you can find here:

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article338830.ece

There are some supporting articles. All are worth reading.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article338879.ece
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article338878.ece

Worth thinking about and one hopes he is wrong. In case you think this is just another overly shrill environmentalist, consider that Lovelock made a very strong argument for the use of nuclear power since it was to his mind the only mechanism by which carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be brought under control. Greenpeace did not like that idea very much. I have to say I don't like the idea very much... but that does not mean he is not correct.

What he has to say is worth thinking carefully about. It is a pity that he is now 86 years old otherwise he might be an excellent target for young students looking for a challenging mentor in graduate school.

Happy New Year

It has been a while since I last updated. This has been due to a move to the UK and a new university. I have been quite busy and not been sure what to say since it is a move to a new environment. Please check back now and then to look for updates. Hopefully when I have a free moment I will add something.

Future of Science 1: Science Magazine's Questions

One of the most readable overviews of the state of science can be found in the article "So Much More to Know" published a few weeks ago in a special edition of Science. For this article, scientists were surveyed on what they saw as the most important unanswered questions in science which could conceivably be solved on the 5-20 year time scale. You may read it here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/78b. Maybe I better rephrase that. You should read it here: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5731/78b. Or better yet, run, do not walk to your nearest internet enabled computer and READ IT!

Why the fuss? If you read this blog occasionally you will realize that one of its purposes, in addition to whatever happens to strike me as interesting, is to educate and provide perspective on science. This article gives a picture of the scientific enterprise in it rawest and most exciting form. It tells us about the unknown in a clear and accessible way. This is the true realm of science, not the ghost of science past you find in a science textbook. These questions will be the stuff of future Nobel prizes and scientific greatness.

I read the article with some relish. It is a wonderful article because it gives a sense of where scientists perceive excitement will be found. For graduate students, hold that thought and try to figure this out for yourself whenever you attend a scientific meeting. You should "sniff the wind" in an abstract sense and see if you can get a feel for the emergence of new paradigms. I will give you two examples from my own experience. In the mid-80s I went to some meetings related to oceanography. At one of those meetings I sat down with a more advanced colleague (he was a Ph. D. student at the time, I was a research assistant) at lunch and we got to asking ourselves what was "new" in the talks at the meeting. This particular meeting was held at a time when the concept of the "biosphere" regulating global climate was "getting traction" as an idea and moving mainstream. For me it was completely and wonderfully new. This notion is still emerging and in some places there remains stubborn resistance (notably the Bush white house).

A second example was two visits I made to PITTCON in the 90s. PITTCON is the premier meeting concerned with analytical chemistry and chemical instrumentation. In 1995, PITTCON was still entrenched in the classical view of analytical chemistry. It was full of atomic spectroscopy, GC, etc. I am not saying there wasn't anything else, but the bulk of what you would have seen there is what you can find in a standard text on analytical chemistry. When I went back a few years later, there had been a sea of change in 4 years. Bioanalysis, DNA sequencing, and other "bio" applications had taken over center stage. This is likely to be the paradigm for many years to come. In other words, people realized that the great unsolved problems in what might be better called "analytical sciences" lie in the direction of biology. Unfortunately, the classic textbooks from which we teach analytical chemistry have not caught up.

The second point I found interesting is a continuation of the status quo in physics. Reading it, you will find the traditional Physics/Philosophy questions about the nature of the universe and dimensions. The "philosophical" position that physics has played in science and life since at least the beginning of the last century (at perhaps going back to Galileo, Descartes, and Newton - Ok, Ok maybe I should say Aristotle and Ptolemy) remains. There are no real surprises there. It is interesting to see this as essentially an old paradigm representing the status quo. What it is missing is the fact that many "traditional" physicists and physics departments have retooled themselves in biophysics while many others struggle to find direction.

A third point of interest is plain as day. Those of you who have not realized that biology is the center of attention, inspiration, and creativity in science need to take a good hard look at this list. Not only are the great problems in biology attracting attention but clearly many people with creativity and imagination have found a home in biological sciences. This bodes well for the strength of the discipline for many years to come. Need I say more? Physics leads the list, but the paradigm this represents is old news while the new focus of imagination is clearly in the biosciences.

The final point was a sense of disappointment and being let down. It is as if they didn't bother to survey chemists. Sure there are one or two (ok maybe three or four) questions that focus on chemistry, but there is a certain spark lacking. Maybe they did talk to a few chemists and they just couldn't give a good account for themselves. What found itself into the list is a set of questions that make you go "huh?" If the best we can come up with to provide 5-20 years worth of excitement for chemists is "the structure of water" and a few other lame notions there is something deeply wrong in the field. It is no wonder that we have trouble attracting students and chemistry departments in places like the UK are being shut down. Let me put it this way. I think of myself as a chemist. I like chemistry. I have worked as a researcher in chemically related fields for roughly 20 years. Even with that background, if someone wrote the definitive paper on the structure of water, I would not give it more than passing interest. I might not even notice. I wouldn't write home. I doubt it would change my outlook on chemistry is any substantive way and I can't imagine making it a centerpiece in my teaching. The question is where are the new paradigms in that question? Even as a chemist I can barely stifle a yawn, call me a Philistine but that's facts. Oh my goodness, let's go out to a secondary or high school to get students excited about the science of chemistry and tell them that we still don't know how many hydrogen bonds between water molecules there are. They are all going to go into medicine. Ok that isn't quite fair since most of our best students want to go into medicine anyway. But, you get my point. As my Ph. D. advisor taught me (he had a unique way of doing this - more on that another day), you gotta ask yourself "Who the hell cares?"

Having come to that conclusion, I decided to spend some time coming up with some questions of my own (not all of them are chemistry oriented). Let me know what you think.

1) Can a chemical sensing system be built that beats a dog? The nose of a dog is a pretty amazing thing. Even in the USA, the center of insane technological approaches to sniffing and screening, when you go through an airport you may find yourself being approached by well mannered dog. There is a reason for that. It means that analytical chemistry can't beat the dog yet for sensitivity, diversity, and cost-effectiveness. Hmm... we have a problem here. I am trying to come up with a question for chemists and here I am taking inspiration from biology. Perhaps I should close up the lab and raise dogs. All kidding aside, what are the unique characteristics of a dog's nose which allow it to beat the best technology the world has to offer. A bloodhound can track a person's scent hours after the fact based on a sniff of clothing. That is simply amazing. I am not aware of a "sniffing" technology that can even recognize the scent of a person, much less track him or her across a field.

2) Is it possible to create a secure operating system for an internet connected computer? Having received a bunch of viruses via e-mail and having noted a spike in the attempts to access my currently "clean" computer I have come to wonder. The triumvirate of virus production, spam, and money seems to be winning the war at present. While there are incremental approaches to new threats that protect for a time, I have not seen any fundamental thoughts on whether it would be possible to create a secure operating system. I suspect this one requires an interdisciplinary answer. My sense is that it will be no more possible to wipe out computer viruses (and related) that it has been to wipe out bacterial disease. I am not convinced that the latter is impossible, but, under the current policies of anti-biotic use, it is unlikely to be anytime soon. I think an analagous situation applies to computers as well.

3) This one is a pretty abstract question, but bear with me. What is the future of dissipative systems in chemistry? What is this guy talking about? A scientist contemplating the characteristics of chemical clocks and related reactions (look up the Beluzov-Zhabotinsky reaction) in the 1960s came up with the concept of dissipative systems. These are structures that form spontaneously in systems far from equilibrium. Perhaps the most approachable dissipative system is the whirlpool that forms in the sink when you pull out the plug. Some argue that the formation of dissipative structures is a characteristic of systems which are far from equilibrium. In undergraduate chemistry, we primarily teach about the thermodynamics of systems close to equilibrium. Systems far from equilibrium appear to have fundamentally different behavior and there seems to be a self organizing principle in at least some of them. This is really a pretty exciting concept and it is to our discredit that we do not try harder to teach these fascinating concepts. As a result, I am convinced there is much gold to be mined if someone were able to harness the self organizing principles in new ways.

So, those are some of the questions that come to mind. Perhaps you have your own questions.

Computers 3: Computers Save Time (really they do?)

I have been thinking again about computers, again. I started thinking about them because I am finally really convinced that computer use has increased my level of productivity (despite the nearly constant distraction of web surfing). I was always a bit dubious and remember the Mantra “Computers save time” which one was supposed to repeat over and over until it was believed. For years I found the comment a friend inGermany said once (“Computers allow you to do quickly things you otherwise would not have done at all.”) rather funny (because it was true). In otherwords, I really have not been convinced of them as a productivity tool. Instead I thought of them as a distraction except when writing computer programs (I have written in PASCAL, BASIC, and C/C++).

But today I was sifting through my e-mail program trying to sort it out because I get rather a lot of e-mail. I have neglected my in and out box housecleaning for a while since I had a very busy semester. After boredom set in (I get a lot of e-mail remember), I pressed the statistics button on my e-mail program and it told me the following. I have received 21,531 emails. I answer approximately half of these giving a nice round figure of 9135 e-mails sent. This covers a period that begins February 10, 1998 and ends today. This only includes the e-mails I saved, I have thrown out a lot of junk over the years. This is an average of 3,000 e-mails received per year and about 1300 sent. This doesn't give the real picture because the volume of mail (in both directions) has increased enormously in the last few years. For example, I have already sent 1616 e-mails and received 2486 in the first 6 months of 2005.

This is quite astonishing. I had no idea. This amounts to 13 received per day and about 9 sent every single day of 2005. What is remarkable, particularly the outgoing part, is that this is real correspondence. Back before the internet was so popular, I used to write letters. I never averaged 9 a day. Maybe one or two a week to a girlfriend.

I suspect that I am not alone in being quietly turbo-charged toward a huge increase in productive work. I am sure other people, if they took the time, would find something similar. If you put that in perspective, at a rate of $1/letter (probably not far off the mark when you think of postage, paper, pens, envelopes, and remember that much of this is overseas correspondence), the 1616 e-mails I have sent this year will buy a decent computer wich will last for 3-4 years (my last one was 3 and a half when it gave up – the first that I actually wore out before it became obsolete).

Let us put this is pespective. My university really likes memos and things on paper. The fundamentals of the university have not adapted to the electronic age and a lot of paper is pushed around. I am convinced the e-era will be over before we get there. However, since I do all of this composition electronically I still have them all. In the paper correspondence, I have only produced some 234 memos and reqeusts for orders etc. While it is not bad productivity (1-2 memos a week), it is clear that the activation barrier (yes, I am a chemist) to productive work is greater when printing and paper pushing are required than it is for e-correspondence.

What is more, I am not convinced anybody has read all of this correspondence, some vanished into a black hole of sorts. If they wanted to prove to me that they did read it, or look back over any of it now, I doubt they could find it, collate it, and read it. But that is not the case from my end. With a few exceptions, I have every peice of correspondence, every assignment any student has ever sent me, every paper and price quote, all the lab manuals, the marks, as well as a lot of the comments I have made on student work.

Again, this is quite remarkable. The filing cabinet in my office is in hopeless chaos. I try (well sometimes I do) and sometimes can find items in my file drawer, but it might take me an hour or in a bad case an afternoon. If I don't find something, I am never really convinced it isn't in there somewhere. But, I can find nearly anything in my e-correspondence in seconds. I can sift through the 800 MB of e-mail and attachments in seconds. In a worst case, I can search my entire hard drive in a few minutes. Again, this is truly remarkable.

Perhaps you do not believe that this is really productive work and think it is really a distraction. What is the productive work that is covered in this huge volume of correspondence? Ok, let's see how this strikes you. My current out box begins in April of 2005 and continues through to today. It has 325 items in it. 72 of those were sent to addresses with edu or ac (academic) in them. This is mostly e-mail to collegues here and abroad about a variety of academic topics. Some students with campus pipeline accounts are included in this group. 140 went to either hotmail or yahoo addresses of which I estimate 95% is correspondence with students. 29 were to addresses with a .de ending (germany), all but 5 of these were correspondence related to the completion of two papers that were submitted for publication recently. The remaining 50 or so are a mix of correspondence with suppliers (books, chemicals, equipment), colleagues (private e-mail for university staff members), scientific friends (a variety of industry locations), and occaisional notes to family and friends. Looking at this “snapshot” of my correspndence,” I think the big winners are students who recceive 50-60% of the mail in this period. During semesters I have regular correspondence with students. I also on occaision write to former students about a variety of topics (recommendations, jobs, graduate program suggestions, etc.). I should note that the proportion of student correspondence is probably underestimated here because I have already done some housekeeping of my outbox.

So to summerize, I have finally become a believer in computers as productivity tools. I was never so convinced that a computer was anything more than a glorified combination of typewriter and calculator. Now I think it really can boost productivity (it has mine), despite the distractions of surfing (yes, I find it a distraction too).

Researchers and Programs in Analytical Sciences

This is a listing of Researchers and Programs in analytical sciences that students thinking of graduate school should know about. I would consider it an honor if one of the students in my courses found there way into one of these labs or programs. When reading this list of people and programs remember they reflect my background and interests.

The point here is that everyone thinks of the big name schools (Harvard, Cambridge, California Insititute of Technology,..) when thinking about great programs for graduate studies. These universities and institutes have excellent reputations and there is a reason for that. However, graduate level research, particularly at the Ph. D. Level is not so simple and there are pockets of excellence in places you might not expect it. For example, in the area of fluorescence spectroscopy (which is dear to my heart) none of these great institutions come to mind. Instead I think of places like: The University of Illinois Urbana Champagne, The University of Maryland Baltimore. The former is a very strong university across the sciences (particularly chemistry) and if you haven't thought about it in the same league as Harvard, maybe you should.

As another example, if you are thinking about optical sciences the University of Rochester and the University of Arizona have been very strong for some time, but within the specialty of microscopy (also dear to my heart) the US as a whole is not very strong and you should look elsewhere (Germany, England, and Australia) because that is where the best are located.

I will try to update this listing as I have time and people and programs come to mind. Please do not get offended if you are not on the list. It is probably a matter of time more than anything else. If you would like to jog my memory please provide a comment or send an e-mail.

Biological sciences:

European Nuerobiology Institute: I visited the European Nuerobiology Institute in Göttingen last summer and ever since I have been trying to get student to think about the International Graduate program offered jointly by the University of Göttingen, The Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, The Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine and the European Neurobiology Institute. The details may be found here: http://www.gpneuro.uni-goettingen.de/The University of Göttingen has been a very strong University for a very long time (44 Nobel prize winners have studied or worked there). But more important than the reputation of these places for you as a student, I do not know of anywhere in the world where such a combination of resources is being brought to bear on such an important scientific problem. There are Nobel prizes waiting for those who figure out how the brain works. Trust me, I'm a Doctor (well in the Ph. D. sense at least).

Analytical Sciences:

M. Bonner Denton (University of Arizona, US) http://www.chem.arizona.edu/faculty/profile/profile.php?fid_call=dent

Paul Geladi (university of Umea, Sweden)
.http://www.chem.umu.se/dep/ok/staff/people/pg/index.html (Has been very influential in the field of multi-variate image analysis and chemometrics). A bit of a weak web site though.

Jonathon Sweedler (UIUC – Note this University has a very strong analytical chemistry program) http://mrel.beckman.uiuc.edu/sweedler/

Richard Zare (Stanford University) http://www.stanford.edu/group/Zarelab/


Fluorescence and/or Biophysics:

Bob Clegg (UIUC, US) http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/People/Faculty/profiles/Clegg/

Eliot Elson (Washington University of St. Louis). http://www.biochem.wustl.edu/~elelab/ele.htm.

Enrico Gratton (UIUC, US) http://www.physics.uiuc.edu/People/Faculty/profiles/Gratton/

Thomas Jovin (MPI Germany) http://www.mpibpc.gwdg.de/abteilungen/060/

Joseph Lakowicz (UM Baltimore, US) http://www.umbi.umd.edu/~mbc/pages/lakowicz.htm

Doug Magde (UCSD, US) http://www-chem.ucsd.edu/Faculty/bios/magde.html

Nancy Thompson: (UNC Chapel Hill. Note this University has a very strong analytical chemistry program) http://www.chem.unc.edu/people/faculty/thompsonnl/nltindex.html.

Microscopy:

Min Gu (Swinburne University, Australia) http://www.swin.edu.au/bioscieleceng/soll/cmp/profiles/Mingu.html.

Stephan Hell (MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany) http://www.mpibpc.gwdg.de/groups/hell/

Thomas Jovin (MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, Germany) http://www.mpibpc.gwdg.de/abteilungen/060/

Colin Shepperd (National University of Singapore) (Formerly of Oxford University, and University of Sydney). http://www.bioeng.nus.edu.sg/people/colin/index.htm

Enrst Steltzer (EMBL, Heidelberg Germany). http://www-db.embl.de/jss/EmblGroupsOrg/per_546.html

Tony Wilson (Oxford University, UK) http://acara.eng.ox.ac.uk/som/People.html

Hurricane and Storm Resources 1: Where to go for the images and advice

Last September I gained new respect for weather systems when hurricane Ivan passed by. While our island was lucky that time, others were not. It is simply a question of time until every island in the Caribbean is hit. What was helpful in the time before Ivan passed was having a fair amount of advanced warning. Ivan was a well established storm by the time it reached 45 degrees W. The papers were a little slow to warn on this one and the University was open the morning before it passed. While it is not necessary to panic every time a storm shows up on the Atlantic, it won't hurt to stock up on noodles, cans, plastic bags, and lay in a store of water when a hurricane forms at 45 degrees west. There are several places to go for information.

These are a series of sites I found useful and I consult some of them daily during the hurricane season.

1) For a quick summary of storms and weather outlook visit:http://hurricane.terrapin.com/. For storms of tropical depression strength or above you will find links to track plots and predicted tracks. Note that storm track prediction is an inexact science. Ivan was predicted to hit us last year but swerved south at the last minute.

2)There are several worthwhile links at the site indicated above to images: http://hurricane.terrapin.com/imagesandmaps.html.en and weather discussion before and after storms: http://www.stormcarib.com/.


3) Unisys provides historical data and current images: http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/index.html. When you visit this site, you will probably want to scroll down to the middle of the page where you will find current tropical weather satellite images and aviation model forcasts. One link that I like is the sea level pressure maps.

4) The US National Hurricane Center is quite helpful and may be found here: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.shtml.

5)In the links on the US National Hurricane Center site, there is a good set of frequently asked questions: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/tcfaqHED.html. My favorite is the question about taping windows. Having dutifully taped my windows for Ivan, I was surprised to learn this was a waste of time and tape.

6) Having learned that tape was not much help, my wife and I constructed a set of plywood shutters based on information and designs found here: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/weather_sub/shutters.html. This is something you will want to do in advance. It took us number of weekends to complete these.

7) The European Union operates a satellite (METEOSAT) that covers the whole of africa and the atlantic ocean up to the caribbean. This is an nice view of what is coming for people living in the windward Islands. It can be animated if desired and includes visible, IR, and water vapor imagery. You can acces the site here: http://oiswww.eumetsat.org/IDDS-cgi/listImages?a=0,m=7,f=1,c=2,o=1,s=0,n=6,d=1,v=400,p=0.


8) Here is a good place to go for information about how to deal with potentially contaminated water. http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/hurricanes/recovery.asp#water.

9) Further health related information in English, Spanish, French, and Creole may be found here:http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/hurricanes/recovery.asp.

10) Finally, be very careful about any wounds that come in contact with flood waters. This is a potential route for leptospirosis infection.

Take some time to check your supplies.