Maxwell’s Demon Beaten (at last)

Having spent hours messing around with a variety of elecrostatic simulators, from the fully-fledged Algor (link) to a limited-demo version of EStat (link), I finally have come across a saviour. Referenced in Holding Forces of Single-Particle Dielectrophoretic Traps (Voldman et al., Biophys. J., 80, 531), Maxwell by Ansoft is a really useful package, and, best of all, it has a freely downloadable 2D version (link). The software is really easy to use (perhaps too easy) and is relatively flexible for simple 2D models. MIT even has the full licences of the 2D and 3D applications on Athena, which is easily, and relatively speedily, accessible via XWindows dialup. Exporting the results is not entirely trivial: the software gives very poor print outs and one is only able to save plots as poor quality GIFs. Saving the solution-set to a datafile on a reasonable grid is also handled poorly and requires some manipulation before it can be imported successfully into MatLab; all of which I’ve yet to fully automate. But for such a small time investment, I’m sure you’ll agree that the figure above is relatively impressive, and so the software looks promising in designing decent dielectrophoretic traps.

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Photos of Wolfson

Images of Oxford (link) is a nice source of aerial photographs of Oxford; an example of which is shown above. Doesn’t College look nice?

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“Two teas without sugar”

Thanks to the generous Kirsty, Guy and I went to see ‘The Dumb Waiter‘ (and other pieces) at the Oxford Playhouse (link). Not only was there a free ‘press’ buffet, but Pinter himself was there. I hadn’t seen this production, or even this play, in his absence before, but I would guess that it was his presence that made all the old ladies chuckle at bit too loudly at all the clever ‘gags’.

But most of all, I was intrigued at sitting among the (supposedly) cultured set being amused by what simply appeared to be everday-life. Sure, there was the odd clever turn-of-phrase, but these “assorted and curious characters” that the production notes praise don’t seem to really be such glorious inventions — they may holiday in the worlds of Pinter�s double-handers; but they really come from every town: eating, drinking, and living the streets.

[Pause]

Or is that just the cleverness of it all?

[Pause]

If so, why pay �20, when you can get a cup of tea in any late-night cafe for 30p?
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Random Networks of Carbon Nanotubes as an Electronic Material

Presented my Journal Club talk yesterday afternoon on Random Networks of Carbon Nanotubes as an Electronic Material, a paper by E.S. Snow et al. that appeared in Applied Physics Letters (link) last March (Vol 82, p2145). The paper can be found online (link).

A copy of the presentation is available here.
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Doubt in the Martin Wood Lecture Theatre (& the rest of our society)

Went to a very interesting lecture yesterday by Harry Kroto, 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (link).

He was a great speaker, being able to hold the audience’s attention, despite reading whole paragraphs (nearly chapters) from various books that he claimed ‘changed his life’. The talk started off very well analysing what it means to be a good scientist; the questioning of everything and taking nothing as a given without looking at the evidence personally (something that may not always be too practical).

It then descended into a rather preaching rant about modern times, took a tour through skeptical religions, and ended with a surreal video of Mexican girls balancing buckyball-models on their heads. And that was it. Had to dash to Said for a business lecture. Damn commercialism.

More details, including a video archive of his previous lectures, can be found on his website of The Vega Trust (link).
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