Month: May 2016

I have been reading books about Dr Richard Feynman. He is one of best American physicist in history. His life is very interesting to me both as human being and scientist. I am not sure there is correlation between hardship on life people have and great achievement they can achieve. But at least, because of the hardships, people might think deeper and can have philosophy of life.

Then, I am reading book about Elon Musk. His life is also interesting. I think I would like to read biographies more. These biography books give me energy when I work on difficult problems. The problem is once I read one biography, I normally find 2-3 book to read next. After Elon Musk, I would like to re-read about “Howard Hughes”, “Warren Buffet”, or “Albert Einstein” for sure. I know there is more to come.

From Feynman, this time what I learned is “ignorant” as a scientist. If scientist doesn’t have answer to a problem, he is ignorant.This is strong words but I do understand now. Physicist does best because we are using very fundamental elements to prove our hypothesis, still it is insanely difficult. I am sometimes asked my boss, what is the problem? I can’t say I am not sure because there should be somewhere the reason. As a professional scientist I have to find out what the problem is and fix it, at worst I need to make sense. I am trying to avoid ignorance whenever we do experiment, we have now a lot of black box, such as electronics and software, we can run experiment but we can never get anywhere until I understand them very well.

The other thing is this “Scientist does not know the answer social problem because normally social problem is much harder than science.” This made very sense to me this might be long term question I was wandering these days. I was wandering by reading a lot of writing on the web,  why are they so sure what they know? How can you possibly conclude that? I was feeling like why people think they are so smart because I can see a lot of statement on the web in this internet age. People are talking and always convince someone based on never tested hypothesis, to me sometime it looks insane, even Physics is not easy, making decision in real life is a lot more tough.

Today, we stayed at lab little late like 11 p.m. or so. Since we measured the sample 40K and wanted cool back down to 0.1K, it took so long time to get there. We are using so called dilution fridge with 3He to reach below 1K, we finally reach 0.8K and we think it is going to go 0.1K  so we left after we put long scan for tonight. Hopefully we have good data by tomorrow.

I am working from April 27th so I am bit tired. I am going to be back Sydney 10th of May. I have learned a lot last two weeks. I am now motivated to improve the capability on instrument to pursuits more higher level of science. And I also started thinking how we could make our Canadian group in Australia. The neutron scattering group in university is very important because students can learn how to operate neutron scattering instrument and would grow up as professors later. And then, they will have other students under him/her. It takes very much time but this is like snowball.

 

I haven’t written here but I am having a lot of new craft beers and whiskey here. All Canadian team like to have beers. So every night after experiments, they are looking for a place to drink beers. It is fun actually to find my own favorites. The U.S. has huge number of craft beer brand from small companies to big companies. I remember the small college town Charlottesville in Virginia, where I used to live, has many craft beers. I got one from Charlottesville but I forgot the name. I got the other one for fridge in hotel yesterday.

Let’s talk about whisky. They like whisky as well of course. We had tour in Washington D.C. we went to whiskey bar, we enjoyed whiskey there. I got highland park 12 years. I was reading article from Bloomberg, Australian are making really expensive but small amount of whiskey at Tasmania, $600 per bottle? I became interested in I need to have it when I come back to Sydney.

Japanese are making good whiskey now you should try it. And also, Japanese started making local craft beers which is good and like in the U.S. and Canada, we will have big movement for craft beers in next 5-10 years I guess as we could see in these counties. I am hoping find good one in Japan when I visit there next time. And also Japanese are now making sparkling sake. I like them too.

By the way, I am little bit about worrying about Australian economy since Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) decreased cash rate 0.25 percent and this is the third time last 15 months. This is not good in long term. Of course RBA has to do that for stimulate economy in short term but…. Since I came to Australia, I felt awkward about this country and started looking at monetary policy and economy. Because housing and prices are super expensive. And, I looked at market and top 30 companies in market capitalization, I soon realized this country is going to be very bad when China went wrong because one third of trade of Australia is with China. I have not trained as economist but I could see something wrong. I can write some here but I would like to be careful because this is happening.

The problem is if Australia went wrong, I don’t know how this country would come back because they don’t have anything to export other than commodities (which no one want to buy when economy is bad). And the debt each households in here have is huge. I wanted to watch each parameters carefully but this is not my job and I don’t have much time for that. I hope my worry does not become true. But I believe this is inevitable because no country can’t avoid the cycle of economy. Anyways, there is nothing I can do for it.

Anyways, I am looking for plans on vacation in late August and early September. I will have been busy until then I am looking for somewhere I can escape and I can relax. I don’t want to do anything this time of vacation.

 

 

The experiment is going well. The Canadian group should be able to write nice paper to established journal. The project is mainly for new graduate student, I think he is very talented and he did good job for making single crystal. I would like to congratulate him. We are going to get additional data to prove further in Australia by the end of year, I am quite excited about it. I now realized that as an instrument scientist working at Australia, it is quite important to have good user community around this area because I am learning a lot just working with them.

Since the experiment is stable so I could have some time to analyze my data and writing paper. I finished manuscript in January and got comments from collaborators, I am now revising papers. I need to finish this as soon as possible. I have still advantages because we found new magnetic phase under pressure in some superconducting material people have never published yet. And also we have an evidence which is needed to understand more about superconductivity on this material. We are going to submit this manuscript to somewhere which has letter form paper because I want this result to be published as soon as possible. I am now trying to figure out how I can present figures on this paper because letter form paper has limitation for number of length of paper. We need short but strong description and 4 or 5 good figures make my point.

Physics today was talking about LIGO and Pluto . I stared reading Physic today recently, I thought it is good time to know other physicist are doing. And physics today are also talking about national budget, these are good source to discuss with science politics in Japan. Physics is interesting enough to work life time. What I can contribute is very small in Physics but as long as I am having fun and professional work it works better than well. I always find nice books from this Physics today, trust me, the book they pick up should be read by few people. I enjoy finding book here about education, textbook, new topics in Physics, science policy, and so on. There is always a book to read next. I remember most now “Asia’s Space Race”, maybe I am going to write something here.

After this trip, I will be having a few experiment in May in Australia. And then, I will have crane training because I have to use crane to setting up experiment. I need to have certification after I attend 5 days crane training. This is the last job to do before I become an instrument scientist, so then I can control almost all equipment on our instrument. I am looking forward to it. In June, I have one important experiment for my project. Then, in July, I have important experiment experiment in France. I’m gonna write these soon. Oh, I forgot. I am going to move in new place right after this trip, May 10th. I am a bit uncomfortable to go to new place and start new life.

 

 

I am catching up with reading what I wanted to read. Since I am learning English, I am trying to read magazines and books in English. As for magazines, I am subscribing Nikkei Asian Review, the Economist, and Physics Today from American institute of physics. I occasionally buy Foreign Affairs and Harvard Business Review. I am now enjoying these but, since English is not my native language, I forget as soon as I read them. That is sad actually.

I enjoyed The Harvard Business Review in May 2016, I can find interesting article every time I buy this magazine. I think I have a desire to be productive as a professional, even though I am a physicist, I like to learn from them about how they think about goal, achievement, managing, behavior, talent, professional, or so. I usually find one or two articles interesting.  This time I quite enjoy reading on “increasing your return on failure” and “HP’s CEO Meg Whitman”. We can’t avoid failing unless you challenge. To succeed fast we need to fail fast, that I am thinking. And I am thinking about risk a lot because of my experience huge earthquake hit in Japan 2011. I have digested the meaning of risk. And I understood a lot of people don’t understand risk because they have just never experienced the failure beyond manageable. I don’t trust people who are saying I can manage the risk. But that is another story, on this article is about what can we get most when we fail. I think I learned a lot. For the “HP’s CEO Meg Whitman”, I quite enjoyed reading how HP’s CEO (who happens to be a female she says) thinks about gender problem and senses of urgency.

For the reason I am reading Nikkei Asian Review is because I am looking carefully at ASEAN countries.  Japan and ASEAN countries should have close it is very important how these countries grow in next decade. I don’t know how China and Australia (because one third of Australia’s trade is with China) end up in this area, ASEAN countries are key to diversity and prosperity for Asia. Since I am a Japanese, I care about Japan. I need to invest more energy and money in this area from Japanese prospect.

I like to read the Economist. Sometime I envy English speaking countries because the magazine can survive because the number of subscribers of magazines are huge. I like the Economist because it has well balanced articles talking about all over the world. Some says you need to keep reading the Economist for 10 years to know world better. I understand now because  because sometime I am unaware of some countries I don’t physically communicate but the Economist makes me curious about it every week so I can look it up. By keeping doing this I think I will be able to have a good understanding what the world is like.

These magazine are good source of books to read next, I read a lot but I want read a lot more. I could pick up several books to read. I will be writing more about this issues and magazines but I am not expert so I think I am writing for myself not to forget what I have read.

I was bit off from writing, now I came back to WordPress. I think WordPress is doing very good job. I can easily write the blog here. I can’t improve my quality of writing though, I think this time I am going to write more.

I am doing experiment at NIST with collaboration with American and Canadian  group. We just started our experiment on Thursday though, I was very impressed the instrument here and our collaborators.

For the instrument, we are using an improved triple axis spectrometer which uses multiple analyzers and a lot of detectors. This instrument is obviously one generation ahead of us. The reactor at NIST is not strong as neutron source with 20 MW like OPAL reactor (also 20 MW) but they know neutron scattering experiment very well. They designed very productive instrument.

We are also working with top group from Canada. They have big school there. The way of being productive in Science is what I have learned recently. A lot of people want to catch up with them, and people think are already close but that is not true. My field, in several months, the situation changes a lot, if you are late for 6 months, your competitors finish their work and most likely to be thinking for the next. So, basically you can’t catch up forever as long as you are doing the same things.

Normally, if they are good scientists, they would improve their ideas for the next with a kind of cycle, business people might say PDCA cycle. Experiment scientists do the cycle (Idea -> Plan -> making sample -> building instrument if  we need -> building sample environment if we need -> doing experiment -> analysis -> comparison with theory -> to submit paper -> to argue paper with referee -> to publish a paper). A excellent scientist makes that a habit. Their cycles are faster, exciting, and comfortable pace for their own. But, once you lose or slow this cycle it is hard to come back. That is what I am afraid of. I need to keep pace exciting enough to be competitive because, as long as you are a rational scientist, you can only improve one parameter at each cycle, then you lose chance to contribute because someone would do that first. Untalented scientists are trapped wrong cycle and they don’t know what they are doing. (I have been seeing a lot)

I have three projects of my own, the first one is multiferroic, second one is superconductivity and magnetism, and third one is magnetism. For the first project, I am far behind since I came in this project later but it has still a lot of things to learn form literature last 10 years. That is still O.K. I am thinking I am learning for the next.  The second project is about superconductivity and magnetism, I am very competitive situation. The third project on magnetism, I think I am ahead of people but so I would like to keep this position and lead this subject. I will write these projects in here to understand better. These are very important in physics I believe for both last 100 years and next 100 years.

Since the experiment here was successful and stable now, we went to Washington D.C. I have been there several times but I still like to see massive buildings. Sumithsonian National Air and Space Museum is a must for sure. And I will keep writing tonight.