The Art of Splette

My ex-graduate student Thomas Splettstoesser is very talented in scientific graphics. The images below of his graced the front page of the ORNL web site and various other places. (If he sends me more I'll post them too). See more of his work here.

Dynamical Fingerprints

Mighty Microbes

Mighty Microbes (again)

Lignin and Cellulose

Americanese versus Britishese

Heads up, guys! (Take notice, everyone). While standing on the track (platform) in England a while ago I thought I'd spend a half hour (half an hour) or so writing about train travel. But in which language - Americanese or Britishese? Why not both?

Riding the train is an alternate (alternative) to the car in Britain. Trains run there 24/7 (all day, every day) and can be convenient transportation (transport), there being a million and a half (one and a half million) journeys per year. You do the Math (Maths) - that's a bunch (load) of trips. But riding on the railroad (railway) isn't always easy. Waiting on (waiting for) a train in Britain is oftentimes (often) the height of ridiculosity (can be riduculous) due to (owing to) endemic lateness, never permitting a sense of normalcy (normality), and sleeping passengers even risk being burglarized (burgled), but in the end train travel can be the least worst (just bearable) option (while not always the 'most best').

During my last train trip I recognised the waiter so I reached out to (talked to) him, asking whether I could get (have) a couple (couple of) newspapers. He said that, no I couldn't get them, he'd have to get them for me, and, anyway, he hadn't wanted to be disturbed and couldn't care less (could care less) so I told him he was nauseous (nauseating) and asked whether I had to write (write to) him to get them, and told him that I had just wanted to touch base (chat) with him, but, being English that last comment must have sounded rude to him because he smacked me one up the bracket, Queensbury rules. I apologised and said it was my bad (fault). He soon perked up when I started talking about soccer (football), and especially about the two-time (double) European champions, Liverpool, and their winningest (with the largest number of wins) coach (manager). A team of much physicality (physical strength) they are, that, I said, going forward (in the future) in upcoming (coming) years will surely win again, but not with the deliverables (potential things to be delivered) expected to be gotten (obtained) from their American (Yankee) owners leveraging (mortgaging) their stadium. He sighed and said that it is what it is (it is what it is). And so indeed it was.

Stardom, Sex, Scandal, Shame, Suicide and Soccer..

While playing for the Norfolk U15 and U18 soccer teams in the backwaters of England in 1975-1978 we players had no idea we were at the birth of the making of social history concerning sex, racism and sport - only years later did we learn that we were witnessing the making of the first openly gay and the first million-pound black soccer superstar, and that our coach was perpetrating child sex abuse that would trigger a worldwide revolution in sports management.

Justin Fashanu (above) was in our U18 team, then became the first black million-pound soccer player, and was the third highest goalscorer in the English Premier League in 1980-81. He was also the first gay to out in the sport, suffered greatly for it, and committed suicide in 1998 after allegations of an improper relationship in the US with a 17-year-old (although the charges had been dropped).

Nick Baker is now writing a book about him, and this is what I communicated to Nick about the quiet, tall striker:

"Justin told me he didn't really want to play football - he was more interested in boxing as a kid, having, I believe, won the English Schools championship. At the time it struck us as weird that a kid with talent actually wouldn't want to play football.

Later on I wondered how many gay boxing champions there have ever been - to me that concept in itself invalidates the perception that no gays can be tough, aggressive and manly, a perception that I suspect underlies the public distaste for gays in the US military.

But in our games on rainy, windswept, muddy Norfolk fields, Justin wasn't the hardest fighter, and would sometimes lose enthusiasm completely, shivering, standing around with his arms folded while the rest of us were huffing and puffing. But then, before anyone noticed, the ball was suddenly in the back of the net and he had put it there. It was like he played in a different dimension.

I remember trying in vain to mark him in practice games (I was a defender). In one of these he twice just popped out of nowhere, stuck a foot out and the ball was in the net. The U18 coach, Graeme Morgan, knew what talent he had (and let the rest of us lesser mortals know about it!) - and within a year or so Fashanu was the Norwich City side in what is now the Premier League, and scoring profusely"

We were just tough, scrapping footballing teenagers.

We had no idea what a star Fashanu would become or that he was gay.

We had no idea what News-of-the-World style tabloid controversy would haunt him later.

And we had no idea that our U15 soccer coach, Paul Hickson, would go on to become Chief Coach of the British Olympic Swimming team, leading them to their best ever performance at the Seoul games. His record-breaking 1988 squad had seven Olympic finalists and included stars like Adrian Moorhouse and Nick Gillingham, who scooped three golds, and silver and bronze medals.

And we had no idea that while we were playing for Hickson he was abusing young female swimmers from our local schools, that he would be doing this for over ten years, that 15 years later, he would be jailed for 17 years for the sex attacks on teenagers in his elite squads, and that his conviction would trigger an ongoing worldwide clean-up.............

Scruffy, scrapping soccer kids unwittingly at the budding of a nexus of change, oblivious to the gathering storm that redefined homosexuality, racism and child abuse in sport....

Dreamland!!

I'm back in dreamland for a few days!! Southern Germany!
Sailed through the recession.
Unemployment 3.9%.
Low national debt.
No housing bubble.
Lipi graduating.
(625th birthday celebrations of venerable Heidelberg University. )

A beautiful wonderland!! With one exception: the ass-numbingly boring Women's Soccer World Cup taking place here. Why 16 million people would want to watch that drivel I will never understand. Only when the day comes that they make the effort to stop the pinball lottery and control and pass the ball a bit will it become worthy of a few more minutes of attention. The potential is there, of course, but they've got a long way to go.

Gaspard de la Nuit

My preferred classical music tends to be from the first half of the 20th century - relatively complex stuff. Among these is my favourite piece of piano music of all - the evocative "Gaspard de la Nuit" by Ravel, based on three satanic poems: Ondine, Le Gibet and Scarbo.

The music is virtuosic, one of the most difficult pieces ever written, and I keep an eye open for new renditions of note. Here's a performance of Scarbo by Valentina Lisitsa that is simply electrifying..

Scarbo:

"I have heard him and seen him again and again, Scarbo the Dwarf. In the dead of night, when the moon was a silver mask on a dark wall, the stars a swarm of bees with stings of piercing light; heard his laugh in a dark corner, and the grate of his nails on the counterpane. I've seen him drop from the ceiling, twirl and roll across the floor like a spindle dropped by a dark enchantress at her wheel. Did I think he had vanished? No. He rose up between me and the moon, high and narrow as a Gothic steeple, a great bell swaying in his head. And then his form utterly changed—now blue and transparent as candlewax, his face as pale as the molten drippings—and into the dark he's gone..."

Frank Munger

Just had an entertaining lunch at Ruby Tuesdays in Oak Ridge with Frank Munger, Senior Writer at the Knoxville News Sentinel. As all locals know, Frank writes the Atomic City Underground blog, the main source of news on Y-12 and ORNL. Frank has written several entries pertaining to our work and Club Mod, most recently here and here. I was impressed to hear that his blog readership is growing and he now gets well over 1M page reads per year. He was also full of praise for Tuan Vo-Dinh, who was a Corporate Fellow at ORNL and is now at Duke. Tuan's departure was a blow for ORNL, but every cloud has a silver lining, and as a result we inherited his capable secretary, Julia Cooper.

What Really Drives a Scientist?

People often ask "What really drives you? What's your grand plan? Ultimate goal?"

It's interesting to briefly reflect on how this, in the case of J.C. Smith, has evolved over time.

When I was a graduate student: I was driven by deep understanding.
Unsure, I needed to find out whether I could do scientific research.
I was hooked into my narrow theoretical subject: I didn't know it at the time, but, maybe sadly, I would never again master any subject so thoroughly. (Conversely, I knew little about anything else, and most seminars, even in my field, were gobble-de-gook!).

When I was a postdoc: I was driven by competition.
There was maturation and widening of experience, becoming a senior member of a group rather than a dumb 22-year-old grad student. This happened, in retrospect, so quickly and with me hardly noticing. But towards the end I was driven by the stressful, cut-throat fight for an independent position that consumes some researchers at this age. This was a time of rejection after rejection. For my present postdocs going through the same purgatory, I've been there and understand. In a tough social battle, the subject sometimes seemed to take second place, and winning, reaching the promised land, mattered most. In retrospect I should have relaxed and enjoyed the science more: the spectrum of opportunity was, and is, much wider than I had imagined.

When I was a junior group leader. I was just driven! A time of networking, lecturing, and energy.
As a junior group leader one is young and liberated, so endless creative energy is expended. Nothing stops you (except wise old institutional bureaucrats). I gave 44 research lectures all over the world in one year!
Here's where the diversification really picked up, spreading out into different areas of chemistry and biophysics. It's not the best strategy for recognition, but I was just too interested in learning about new subjects to stick to one narrow sub-field, and was also a bit of a daredevil, sticking my nose into projects of which I knew nothing (I used to be the guy who'd put on a green wig to make a fool of himself in a crowd just for a laugh).
I also learned during this period just how important the social element of science is. Many excellent scientists achieve little because they can't get on with other scientists. But I was gregarious - got on well with most people. So when some colleague came and asked how we could collaborate, I'd often dream up some questionable way of doing so.
A junior group leader needs to be able to devise research, supervise it and write it up. I always knew I could do that, even as an undergrad: it was actually doing science I wasn't sure about early on. In one's twenties and thirties in science, as in many jobs, one learns one's strengths and limitations, comes to terms with them, and devises a way forward playing to the strengths with the limitations on board. If that way forward is beneficial to society, you have a career.

As a senior guy. Driven by impact and quality improvement. No longer needing to prove oneself to anyone (or to oneself) in quite the same way, things get more serious and focussed. A range of techniques has been mastered and these, while still evolving, will probably form the core of what I get involved in in the next 10 years. So what happens now is a gradual, step-by-step expansion of known territories, simultaneously on many fronts. Herschbach said it's like rolling out a big red carpet which has no end. For me that carpet is more an area than rolling in one direction, with each co-worker working on a different part of the perimeter. I am helping one co-worker to push it out first on one side, then going over and helping another push elsewhere. A body of work expands, about 15 publications a year, and much of my time is thus spent trying to understand what co-workers have found then helping them formulate language that expresses as accurately as possible what these findings are and mean. Thousands of other scientists are pushing out their carpets, too, and their pushing helps unroll ours and vice versa. Where and how we push gets to be more important now: I'm driven by trying to improve the quality of I do, by applications to fields of importance for society, and by communication to non-scientists.

But sometimes I look up at a plaque on the wall at home, made and signed with generous thanks by 50 ex-co-workers. As a grad student, and even 5 years ago, I never thought about such a thing, but maybe that symbolic plaque drives me more than anything else.