Snake-Mimicking Moth

....the picture tells all.

ORNL-UT cooperation to be strengthened..

....according to an announcement by Gov. Bredesen, with 200 new faculty positions at UT staffed by researchers at the lab, and a doubling of the number of doctoral degrees awarded at the university. This is just what both institutions need, but for best effect will require overcoming some obstacles.

One of these is that there is a problem at ORNL in housing undergraduate and graduate students and postdocs as they do not 'carry off' much overhead. Thus, according to the 'full cost recovery' model by which ORNL operates, these young researchers become financial liabilities for ORNL, which must provide office space, heating, basic facilities etc out of the organisational burden (overhead), even if they arrive with salaries from elsewhere. This problem could be remedied at least in part by expanding the space allocated on the ORNL campus to the UT/ORNL Joint Institutes, by re-assigning parts of existing buildings, if this is legally conceivable. My perception (maybe wrong?) is that the Joint Institutes have so far been largely technology platforms e.g., for the Bioenergy Science Center (BESC) systems biology apparatus and the UT/ORNL NSF Kraken supercomputer. Although BESC and Kraken have been very successful for both UT and ORNL, (and I am involved with both myself) the dedication of the Joint Institutes to facilities rather than UT:ORNL grassroots research cooperation leaves a vacuum. So basically what I am saying is that if a student, postdoc or visitor wants to come and work with an ORNL staff member or UT faculty member at ORNL (and has their salary already paid from some external source) then ORNL needs to have a mechanism in place to welcome these people with space, offices and open arms, without needing to worry about extra costs, and whatever the subject they work on: this will be cost effective for ORNL in the long run as it will produce lots of cheap, high-profile science that can be used to write money-winning grants in the future.

Secondly, if ORNL staff scientists are to become UT faculty then they need to teach - maybe not a lot, but some at least - and most of the staff scientists I know would be happy to do this. This would help staff UT classrooms in the coming budget crunch, but there would have to be a mechanism in place to pay them. Given the relatively high salaries and astronomical overheads applied at ORNL the hourly rate of an average staff scientist is likely to be much higher than UT could afford. Hence, the corresponding budget strain may have to be absorbed by the funding agencies currently paying the staff scientist salaries. How they could do that is a good question, but I believe it is in the interests of the agencies themselves (DOE, NIH, NSF, etc) that their funded researchers keep their minds broadened and in contact with bright students by the noble endeavour of teaching. It's certainly in the interests of both ORNL and UT to have hordes of bright, motivated graduate students populating the offices and corridors at Oak Ridge at midnight...

Quote of the Decade

...for a football tifoso at least.















Pepe Reina and the big red ball.


"I lost sight of the official ball and stayed on the red one. I went for the red one instinctively as that was the one closest to me and the other one went past me." Pepe Reina on that demon beach ball that condemned Liverpool to a 1-0 defeat by Sunderland, October 2009.

Wishing readers all the best for 2010 and not too many red beach balls.

Air Travel the Day after the Detroit Terror Incident

In a classic case of 'closing the barn door after the horse has bolted', the day after the Christmas Day bombing attempt on flight NW253 we of flight DL9 bound for Atlanta were subjected to two hours of delay at Heathrow airport for extra frisking. Then, at Immigration at Atlanta, my fingerprint machine appeared not to work, leading to my being taken to another room and left forlornly for two further hours, thus putting paid to any futile, lingering hope of making the connection to Knoxville.

Now....here are some, possibly relevant, facts...

.....anti-terrorist wars have already cost the US at least $800 bn and finally will have cost an estimated $2-3 trillion,
.....of the order of one hundredth of the above amounts (i.e., ~$10 bn) has so far been spent on improved airport security, and this not always wisely.
.....a "puffer machine" capable of detecting explosives such as that allowed on NW253, costs about $160K; sniffer dogs presumably less.

Maybe I'm wrong, but by my estimation, given the money already spent, which is still only of the order of 1% of the cost of the wars, enough puffer machines etc could have been installed, sniffer dogs bred and trained and friskers hired to effectively, easily, rapidly and quickly process all international flights into the US.

...and I wouldn't have missed my flight to Knoxville.

Off for 3 weeks in Europe

Including a trip to England and then to Germany for, among other things, my 50th birthday symposium. Thanks to Jiancong for the comforting opinion that 50 is the new 40. The photo illustrates why when driving to Germany from Britain it's best to do what I do and avoid navigating via France...

Our mercury research on the local TV...

..here..thanks to Jim Matheny of WBIR Channel 10 for the interview.

The Physics of Biomolecules

"The Physics of Biomolecules" UT Physics colloquium webcast, 30th November 2009. Relatively pedagogical at the beginning but then accelerated a bit too fast in order to reach the movie at the end.