Someone, or some algorithm, at Nature thinks that lithium and graphite are heavy rare earth elements.
Richard Beanland
@richbean0.bsky.social
Likes mucking about with atoms, crystals and diffraction, using electrons mainly
“I have done all of the things that one is supposed to do to earn a tenure-track position. And I have done approximately 85% of them by typing prompts into a large language model and then moderately editing the output.” 🤣🤣🤣 brilliant 👌🏽 open.substack.com/pub/inprepar...
Opinion: I Was Not Allowed To Type Prompts Into ChatGPT During My Chalk Talk And This Is Discrimination
By Dr. Rachel Simmons, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University
open.substack.com
The US government is arresting scientists on pretextual grounds to consolidate their grip on authoritarian power. This should scare the hell out of every single one of us. open.substack.com/pub/rasmusse...
Virology Research is Not a Crime
Free Vincent Munster and Claude Kwe
open.substack.com
Q: Does my thesis adviser pick the snake? A: No. Your adviser just tells the guy who picks the snakes how good your thesis was.
FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense
March 13 2022 4/24/23 5/8/24 5/13/26 CALENDAR 2027
buff.ly
How Big Can The Periodic Table Get Before Students Call Bullshit? PDF: www.immaterialscience.org/s/Longest-Pe...
A small flaw in an online proof system can have catastrophic consequences.
Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies | Quanta Magazine
An attack on a fundamental proof technique reveals a glaring security issue for blockchains and other digital encryption schemes.
quantamagazine.org
July issue @actacrystc.iucr.org The cover article outlines lessons that can be learned from the the profiles and quality of refined MicroED structures #MicroED #electrondiffraction #ED #qualityindicator #bestpractice #cryoEM #Goldstandard #openaccess #IUCr journals.iucr.org/c/issues/202...
Here is a really nice contribution from Haroon Qaiser a grad student in @expmicromech.com, and a wide team, from Aachen, Oxford & Brno - where we systematically explore how best to form electron channeling contrast patterns (ECPs) and images (ECCI) in the scanning electron microscope 1/ 🔬🧪
Experimental Micromechanical Characterisation Research Group@expmicromech.com · last yr.🚨 New Preprint: "AstroECP: towards more practical Electron Channeling Contrast Imaging" M. Haroon Qaiser, Lukas Berners, Robin J. Scales, @tbizh95.bsky.social, Martin Heller, Jiri Dluhos, Sandra Korte-Kerzel, @bmatb.expmicromech.com arxiv.org/abs/2507.00354
🚨 New Preprint: "AstroECP: towards more practical Electron Channeling Contrast Imaging" M. Haroon Qaiser, Lukas Berners, Robin J. Scales, @tbizh95.bsky.social, Martin Heller, Jiri Dluhos, Sandra Korte-Kerzel, @bmatb.expmicromech.com arxiv.org/abs/2507.00354
"When you outsource the thinking, you outsource the learning." deplet.ing/the-copilot-...
The Copilot Delusion
Disclaimer: This post was written May 2025, and the arguments apply to AI code capabilities at this time. The arguments around lack of competence are certainly likely to become less prevalent-while th...
deplet.ing
their theory would then lose touch with real life and turn into pure speculation devoid of any scientific value. And if an experimenter works without theory, he would merely perform useless experiments, which are numerous as it is and which, of course, 10/
Two phosphine oxide structures in a week, one was intentional, one not really or rather really not. #crystallography #RealTimeChem Ones again traditional soundtrack for these structures: www.youtube.com/watch?v=C446... 1/2
While diving into this beautiful topic is important to remember that ADPs are neither 'thermal parameters' nor 'thermal ellipsoids' (as implied in the acronym ORTEP): they model displacements in the averaged structure without discriminating between thermal and static contributions #crystallography
IUCrJ@iucrj.iucr.org · last yr.Richard Dronskowski: Everything you always wanted to know about the Debye–Waller factor but were afraid to ask #DebyeWallerFactor #ThermalMotion #AnisotropicDisplacementParameters @RWTH...#IUCr https://journals.iucr.org/paper?S2052252525004968
#MEDPore2025 #tiling nr. 7 (Bahia palace, Marrakech): they knew the truth on octahedral tilting in perovskites all along... #crystallography #BraggYourPattern #perovskites
Since Brexit became a reality & the transition started (which still hasn’t finished) every stage has been a shit show. Government has been under prepared at each change & more barriers to trade imposed on imports and exports. The right wing press doesn’t write about it because it doesn’t suit them.
...but them being hard to make means they will have to be even better at their job to make manufacture worthwhile. A difficult conundrum to solve. To me computation seems much better as a focused tool for understanding a material of interest, rather than a discovery method.
Pocket guide to materials discovery calculation methods (repost from the other place)
Holy sh*t. This is a real xkcd, not funny, disturbing, and also one that must be shared https://xkcd.com/3081/
After freezing all grants to Columbia University last week, the National Institutes of Health is now stopping grant and contract payments to Harvard University and four other universities. scim.ag/4ikYp2T
NIH freezes funds to Harvard and four other universities, but can’t tell them
Move follows broader White House attack on Harvard funding and stop-work orders to contractors
scim.ag
There is no good time for bad news and today is no different than any day in our recent time. Nevertheless, I write this thread to chemistry faculty job seekers in the United States. #chemjobs #facultychemjobs #chemsky 🧪⚗️
Canada for the win—share it: www.wallawallademocrats.com/other-voices...
Carney’s Checkmate: How Canada's Quiet Bond Play Forced Trump to Drop Tariffs — Walla Walla Democrats
Let’s talk about the moment Donald Trump blinked. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a tweetstorm or a rally rant. When the tariff threats that had the world on edge—125% on China, 25% on Canada’s autos, a glo...
wallawallademocrats.com
This is truly wonderful... The gems of science history, ethical and intellectual depths surrounding the incredible character of Kathleen Lonsdale, so beautifully condensed in just above 10'. Absolutely worth watching for anyone, and a must if her name sounds new to any chemist. #womeninScience
Mike Glazer@glazer1.bsky.social · last yr.
University administrations are largely a scam and should be sized down.
On the responsibilities of intellectuals and the rise of bullshit jobs in universities
You may never have considered yourself to be one. Why would you? But if you’re reading this, there is more than a likelihood that you are one. If you’re a
academic.oup.com
What a start of 2025 in #MOF #TEM analysis! I just saw a second stunning work... take-home keywords: 'riCOM' and 'Ptychography' 🌟 Check them out: really fantastic 4D-STEM stuff that would have been sci-fi just a few years ago. pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a... ; www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Atomically resolved imaging of radiation-sensitive metal-organic frameworks via electron ptychography - Nature Communications
This study investigates optimal 4D-STEM data acquisition parameters for low-dose electron ptychography, achieving near-atomic-resolution ( ~ 2 Å) reconstruction at electron doses of ~100 e−/Å2 on high...
nature.com