DIY nuclear experiments

People might get the false impression from this blog that I underestimate the risk of ionizing radiation. That is not the case. Radiation is dangerous. It is also well understood, and ubiquitous. A natural 400 KeV gamma ray will do just as much damage as a natural one, so treating the risks from them differently doesn’t make a whole lot of scientific sense.

That being said, one needs to respect nuclear materials. If you are going to build a nuclear reactor in your garden shed, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it. The first half of the 20th century is full of tales of radiation-induced sickness that happened because people didn’t know what the risks were. We know now. So educate yourself, and be sensible of you are going to fool around.

Is need-based hiring good for women?

A while ago I was looking at a job opening in one of the world’s best geochemistry labs. Asking people in the know, I got the following advice:
“If you’re gonna apply, do it fast. They don’t hold a traditional search, they just take the first qualified applicant.”

I was taken aback by this, but I don’t know why. After all, this is how positions in the real world are filled. A job needs to be done, so when someone who can do it shows up, they’re hired. A job is not a gift to be bestowed on the winner of a competition; It is something that has to be done. And in the case of this particular lab, the approach obviously works well for them. They are the best at what they do. So I started wondering: Why isn’t this approach used more often. And I wondered some more: Would such an approach help bridge the gender gap?

Pondering the last question, I think that it depends on the cause of the gap. Let’s assume two endmember causes for underrepresentation of female hiring at high levels in academia. The first endmember assumes that everybody in the selection processes that produce male bias is slightly biased against women. The second assumes that a small number of selectors are strongly biased*.

If the second case holds true, then those institutions saddled with such a person will always find an excuse not to hire women no matter what, so the search methodology is irrelevant.

With the first case, if you have a bunch of almost equal people competing for a spot, then subtle biases could end up making the difference that gives the job to a male. But if they simply hire the first qualified person to come along, then that subtle difference shouldn’t matter, as long as the advertising process is open and honest. Obviously, that’s a big if- a first come first serve practice could easily be corrupted by an old boys network**.

On the practical side, A first qualified candidate will generally enhance the productivity of the selectors, as the service commitment would generally be smaller. And if it works faster, it would be more amenable to researchers who have a family to support and can’t wait around for 15 months while a process slowly churns. But I honestly don’t know what the gender breakdown for scientist heads of households is, so I can’t say if that’s gender related or not.

* Note that overt bias is illegal and/or socially unacceptable in a growing number of countries these days. So the sort of person I’m talking about here is someone who claims to be fair-minded in principle, but always finds a reason to disqualify any specific woman who interacts with his sphere of influence. Whether this is done consciously or unconsciously is irrelevant for the present argument.

** Assuming that most labs are run by old boys- otherwise, it could be corrupted by the Nefarious Web of Quazinonymous Women Bloggers in the opposite direction.

White man’s disease

I just got back from the skin cancer clinic. Here in Australia, due to high insolation, outdoorsy lifestyles, and pale skin, the skin cancer rate is 1700 per 100,000 of population. That’s almost 100 times the global average of 19, and is a ratio that some of us like to simplify to 1.7%. I don’t have figures for geologists, but we tend to exceed the population average in all three of the above categories, so they can’t be good.

In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever worked in a geology department without at least one skin cancer survivor. Luckily, this year I seem to be clear, for now. But it is still a significant career risk factor, and if y’all to any field work at all, it is something to consider.

And I reckon it is a risk that is underemphasized. In 2007, when we were drilling for uranium, we had huge regulatory constraints involving dust levels, masks, dosimeters, filters, scintillometers and associated paperwork. Now, exposure to radioactive elements is obviously a bad thing, but at the same time we were working for 13 hours a day underneath a gigantic unshielded nuclear explosion.

As it turned out, the only detectable dose we recorded was on the radiation badge that a driller chucked in his hand luggage and sent through the X-ray machine at the airport on the way home. But after a few days on the job, a number of people were showing obvious signs of sunburn. Ors company regs require all of our employees to use sun protection, but there isn’t any way to do the same for contractors, other than ask nicely.

In fact, it makes me wonder. On a per megawatt basis, is the cancer risk from sun exposure inflicted by building and maintaining solar power stations greater than that from nuclear power?

Memorial Day 2.0

Map the Fallen is a Google Earth plugin that shows the hometown and place of death of all coalition soldiers who have died on deployment since 2001. Lest we forget.

Oops!... He did it again

Anyone eying the live seismology display in the Geoscience Australia Exhibit Hall before lunch might have noticed a little red circle appear in a tectonically quiescent protrusion of the Asian continent. A quick trip to the USGS earthquake page confirms that once again, there was a zero depth seismic event in North Korea. Tired of having the limelight stolen by Pakistan and the Middle East, the petulant pop star of the DPRK has tried lighting his farts again.

This time, he might have gotten more than a fizzle. At magnitude 4.7, this quake explosion had several times the energy of the previous test, which was discussed by the geoblogosphere at the time. Still, it isn’t clear what the purpose is. North Korea is unlikely to develop a booming export industry trading in radioactive dirt. The millions degree temperatures achieved will not burn off the glorious leader’s excess body fat, scour his arteries, or resurrect the brain cells he lost in a stroke. Starving people can’t eat antineutrinos. So really, this looks more like a pathetic attempt at a Madonna cover. The question is, who does he think of when he touches his little pink switch?

Scorpio and Orion

According to Greek Mythology, Orion was a great hunter who angered the gods with his prowess. Being Greek and touchy, they sent a scorpion after him as revenge. The story goes that Orion is perpetually avoiding the scorpion, so that the two are never in the sky at the same time- Orion always sets before the scorpion rises, and refuses to reappear until the Scorpion is gone.

The reason this works for the Greeks is that Scorpio is a Southern Hemisphere constellation. From the northern midlattitudes, it is only visible for 9-10 hours a night, so there is ample time for a gap before and after Orion. Down here in Australia, though, the opposite is true. Scorpio stays up for 13-14 hours, so there is a window where both Scorpio and Orion can be seen low on opposite horizons. This is most easily seen around this time of year, when Orion sets early in the evening, and Scorpio rises right around sunset.

I few years ago, I took a picture of this, but never got around to blogging it. So here they are:
Orion diving into the last glimmer of twilight in the west, while in the East:

Scorpio rises over downtown.

Squid 2 is in the wild

Squid 2, the sequel to the blockbuster SHRIMP data reduction package known as Squid, has just been released to the public. Surf, don’t walk, to sourceforge to get the latest isoplot and squid 2.

Research productivity at Hogwarts

The Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry is known primarily as a teaching institution. However, it is important to realize that like all cutting edge academic institutions, research is an important part of the school’s mission, and teachers there are expected to produce novel and important research commensurate to their position. Here we examine the publication record of a few key teachers at the school.

Let’s start with Professor Minerva McGonagall. As head of a house, there is no doubt that Professor McGonagall has a steadfast service reputation. And she seems to be an adequate teacher. But when it comes to publication, she is sorely underperforming:


We would expect more from the quiet, bookish Professor Sprout. Unlike McGonagall, she doesn’t waste her precious research time chasing Death Eaters, working with admin, or counseling students. And sure enough, she has several dozen publications, and is one of the more productive members of the faculty:

Professor Snape combines McGonagall’s exemplary service record with Professor Sprouts’s love of subject matter and attention to detail. And as Google Scholar shows, this has had a fantastic result on his productivity. He has more papers than the rest of the staff combined:


No wonder that he perennially feels overlooked, put-upon, and underappreciated; his grants are probably keeping half the school afloat.

One possible interpretation of these data anecdotes are that evil is conducive to research. A quick check of Lord Voldemort suggests that this is not the case, but one has to be careful. As previous articles here in the lounge have noted, Google Scholar is particularly insensitive to women who change their name. Although Voldemort is not a woman, the same name changing issues may effect him, so it is likely that he may adopt the habits of many female professors by publishing under his ‘maiden’ name, Tom Riddle:



I wonder how the citation index rates them all?