Viva Espana

Acabo de escribir a algunos de mis amigos españoles para decirlos acerca de mi blog y para favorecerlos escribir los comentarios. Espero que mi espanol es bueno. Aqui en Sheffield hoy, llueve y acabo de ensalada de comer sin cualquier caloría - gran para el estómago! Un abrazo!

NF3

Morning All

Does anyone out there know anything about the greenhouse gas, NF3? Frank D has given me some useful info already but just thought I'd ask. I reckon we will be able to detect it and a few articles lately have suggested that being able to do this could be quite important for guaging acceleration or deceleration to global warming. The photo is where I would like to be today instead of in this pit called Sheffield. It's the Street of the Knights in Rhodes Old Town, Rhodes, Greece. Have a good day all.

Cycling, Recipe #1 and the power of a phone call

Morning all,

Have to type quickly as I've a lot to do today. First, today was the first day I ditched the car and cycled to the tram stop (about 15 minutes uphill - not easy when you're 15 stone and hopefully around 6 lb by now; weigh-in day is Friday so take a look at my blog about 9am to find out if I am euphoric or mega-depressed!). I left home at 7.05 am and opened my office door at 8.05 am which isn't too bad really. At that time (half an hour later than I normally arrive - give me lots of brownie points please Mr Head of Department and VC, lick, lick, let me clean your boots) there is still no-one in the department. The journey was unusual though in that I was the only one on the tram in shorts and a t-shirt (I've changed now into more appropriate gear for the day's work ahead of course). People can't accept someone "out of the box" in Britain - so the whole journey was characterised with the other passengers glancing over towards me no doubt thinking "Oooh! Look at him - he's cycled to the tramstop, ooh ahh......" . When you glance back, they immediately avert their eyes and pretend everything is normal and that their day hasn't actually been marred by the appearance of a semi-nude cyclist. Tomorrow I will distribute leaflets amongst my fellow passengers, telling them to beware of shorts-clad commuters who may be carrying the dreaded Spoke's Disease - a potentially fatal disease affecting people's curiosity.

OK, now to my first recipe for you all - or at least any of you bloaters out there like me who are trying to shed a few pounds ......... or should I say kilograms. Here it is:

Heat one portion of dried noodles (boil for 4 minutes in water). Pour out the water and add a few drops of virgin olive oil, a table spoon of soy sauce, a handful of chick peas (from a tin - they're easier that way). Heat on a fairly hot heat for 3-4 minutes and then .................................................................... my piece de resitance.................. crack open and egg into the mixture, and mix it round while still heating until it's cooked (it just looks kind of "strandy"). Serve in a bowl with 3 Rivitas coated thinly with an LB film of Vegemite. Heaven!

The third topic in this morning's blog is a phone call I had yesterday. Unfortunately I was out but the caller - my great friend Frank G - left a message. In one minute, he managed to make me feel great; just his completely friendly manner, his banter, his jovial light-heartedness were enough to lift the spirits. It made me think how we can all affect each others' lives (difficult positioning of the apostrophe there - not sure I've got that right. Is it the "lives of each other" in which case I would be right, or should it be the "lives of others" in which case it would be "each others' lives"; comments please) so positively in just a few minutes. So today I am going to phone one of you and lift your spirits - of course I'll phone Frank G back as well! That's it until later today. A bientot.

Old-fashioned Units!!!!

OK, ok, ok - I apologise for using old units for my weight in the last post! A few of my friends from overseas have asked "What are stones? And what does the symbol "lb" mean?" Well, it's simple but really of course, as a physicist, I should have used SI units........................ however, rather than mend my ways, I'll explain more about the old units.

One "pound" (symbol "lb" not to be confused with "LB" for Langmuir-Blodgett) is 453.6 g, or 1 kilogram is 2.2 lb. It gets more complicated since pounds can be subdivided into ounces (symbol "oz", not to be confused with a well-known wizard) - 1 kilogram is also 2 pounds and 3.3 ounces (3 lb 3.3 oz) since there are 16 ounces in one pound. Who said the British weren't logical?

Now to stones.................. one stone is 14 pounds, or about 6.35 kg. so 16 stones and 1 pound is approximately 102 kg and 13 stones (my target weight) is approximately 82.6 kg! So, my challenge is to lose a huge 20 kg! That's 40 half kilo packs of lard!! Nice!

Hope this has enlightened you SI-ers!

Back from Bonnie Scotland

Well, today is the first day back to work after Bonnie Scotland. A great time was had by all including Bella!

Before going away, I forgot to add the Monolayer Eating video so here it is; let me know your comments! Matt worked really hard on this, so hopefully your comments will be constructive. I had 374 emails to deal with on my return - so much for 2 week holidays. Having done that, had a flurry of emails with Nick Hardy who has just submitted his PhD thesis - well done Nick, now just the 6 hour viva to go through! Now, about to do a few references for new graduates eager to get on the job ladder, then it's home if the car holds out. Think I've got battery problems - time to either change car or do what I've threatened to do for years, ditch the car and cycle to the tram stop.

Weight problem news: OK, my vow to change my dietary lifestyle has finally come into action. I've been on a "no bread, no butter, no marj, no cheese, no crisps, no fatty meat, no chocolate, no beer, lots of fish, lots of salad, lots of fruit diet" for 8 days now and I've lost about 6 lb in weight already! I can hear the lavish applause as I type this!! My aim is to reduce my weight by 18.75%, taking me down to a respectable 13 stone! Yes, that's right I was (note the past tense!) 16 stone 1 lb on day 1 of the new regime, but am now a mere 15 stone 9 lb - what a skinny thing I am!
Well, back to work, enjoy the video!

Wednesday 9th July

Well, yesterday heralded the monolayer eating experiments! They all worked well and Matt (from LMR Productions Ltd) has done a great job filming. Today he's using Sony Vegas 8.0 to do the editing, so hopefully tomorrow or Friday will see it on this blog.

Also, written 15 letters this morning to wayward bound students who have failed a wad of exams and whom I'm trying to motivate to turn over a new leaf. The problem is that some of them take my advice and turn over a new leaf for a few days, only to turn it over again soon after!! Got a meeting later this afternoon with one of my PhD students and his other co-supervisor to discuss progress.

The photograph is a sunrise in Madeira last summer.

Late afternoon, Monday 7th July

Well, Matt is nearing the end of his first work experience day. This afternoon, he has started making a database for our 4th year class so that the 4th Year co-ordinator can call up performance details of the cohort and see graphically how their overall marks have varied over their first 3 years.

Tomorrow will take us into the lab - we're going to set up the Monolayer Eating experiment and we might also do a bit of optical microscopy to let him see small stuff! Buying a tripod tonight from the shop I hate most in all the world, Argos, for the film-making tomorrow. I hate it because the snob in me recoils from coming into contact with the entire cross-section of humanity when purchasing anything from its premises! I never used to be a snob, but years of watching Britain erode into a state which gives nearly all of my hard-earned tax to people who have often never done a hard-day's work in their lives, turns you towards the right-wing! Sorry, over-political, calm down boy, take it easy! That's it until tomorrow. hasta manana amigos.

Monday 7th July

Today marks the beginning of my eldest son Matthew's work experience week with me. We've already done a job this morning that I thought would last all day. It's great having a personal assistant right next to you as opposed to secretarial offices and technical workshops that help a lot but aren't immediately sitting next to you! So we've done some analysis on our first year students' performance, mainly looking for correlations between performance at University and A-level grades. In previous years, the correlation has been extremely weak but this year it is a bit stronger.

Tomorrow, we 're going to start filming an experiment called "Tim's Monolayer Eating Experiment" which will be useful for our website and for talks on LB Technology. I'll not spoil the surprise about exactly what it is since I can post on this blog when it's finished. Let me just tell you that you won't be particularly enthralled unless you are fascinated by mono-molecular thin films like me! That does rule out a lot of the population!!!!

Well, the only other thing to add this lunchtime is some mention of yesterday's amazing Wimbledon tennis final. My Spanish friends will be mentally exhausted today! Viva Nadal! Viva Espana!!! It was totally incredible - probably the best final ever. It's been a great summer so far for Spain and the Olympics haven't even started yet. So Felicidades Rafa! Tienes el campeon del mundo!

Test Post

Nick has sent me some nice photos from last year's conference to Krakow, Poland. Here are some of them. Why do I look twice as big as Nick?

Gustavo (above in green shirt) has just left sunny Cordoba for less sunny Germany for a year or so there before hopefully becoming a lecturer somewhere. Anyone wanting to recruit a fantastic

researcher could do much worse than hiring any of Nick (black T-shirt), Gustavo, Stu (Mr Cool) or Alan (peeping between the coach seats). More photos next week.

Late Friday and the weekend is here

Evening All

It's been a busy afternoon. A >2 hour meeting and then a quick meeting with Stu who showed me some really great sensing results. If anyone knows any specific applications for detecting butanone or trimethylphosphate, please let me know. If we can find a need for detecting these vapours, then we're in the money!

Also thanks for your emails and comments about my blog. It's been really nice catching up with those of you whom I haven't heard from in a while and also getting some really interesting queries and questions about our work. Frank Davis from Cranfield asked me about we can tell the difference between cod and haddock? Before giving him a serious reply, I couldn't resist saying that we can tell because cod is more expensive than haddock in the fish shop!! If you're really curious, then it's because as fish (and meat) decays, a mixture of organic amines are evolved (as decomposition products) and this mixture is unique to the particular species of fish in question. Our materials respond optically to organic amines (that is, their uv-visible spectrum (or colour) changes subtely when they come into contact with various amines) and the response for each material is slightly different from the next. Therefore, by looking at the response of several sensing materials, we can effectively identify a different combination of amines and therefore a different fish! That's the theory, the practice is more difficult to achieve but we're getting there!

Next, it was great to hear from Colin Dooling, a former PhD student of mine that some of you will know. Colin is doing really well in his job and quite clearly has the money to buy lots of my paintings. I reckon he should spend a bit on artwork for his house, don't you?

In signing out, I hope you all have a great weekend and enjoy the sun if you're in Spain or Turkey and the rain if you're in Britain! Adios amigos.

Friday's jobs

Well, the sun's out for now, but rain showers are promised for the next 3 days! It's hard to think that here in Sheffield, it's about 18 degrees C but over in Cordoba it'll be probably 35+ degrees C! I wish I was there today instead of here - a nice little walk around the Mezquita is just what I need this morning to get the inspirational juices flowing!

I'm seeing Stu and 11 to discuss his thesis structure and to look over our latest results on porphyrin interactions with our library of analytes. And, he'll probably tell me about the real fish tests he's been doing! It seems as though we can now tell the difference between cod and haddock! Some of your Sheffielders and Rotherhamers will know that the choice of cod or haddock can be quite important in certain places around here!

That'll take me to lunchtime and then a lunchtime meeting with one of my best friends Mike from CICS over a pint and a caeser salad. Next up at 2pm is our progression meeting which decides the fate of all of our Level 1, 2 and 3 students. More thinking today about our work on expansion/contraction of monolyers - had an idea yesterday but sitting on it for longer before blogging about it as we have a pending paper shortly to be sent off to the journal. Few more things to do before the weekend arrives and quite a busy week next week before my hols! Hope you're all well - please keep commenting.

Science things from this morning....

Morning all

Amidst some admin work this morning, a couple of research issues are worth mentioning. First, we want to do some work aimed at making PbS nanoparticles. For this we will use a water subphase containing lead acetate or lead nitrate. The lead ions should then be taken up by a floating monolayer of a calixarene that my student Faridah is working on. Faridah will then make multilayer films of up to 80 layers thick and then we'll expose to H2S gas (not nice!) in the same way as we make CdS nanoparticles. The diffusion of H2S through the multilayer should result in:

Pb2+ + H2S ---> PbS + 2 H+ . Accordingly to my mate Alexei (Hallam Univ) PbS nanoparticles should yield transitions in the visible. I guess this makes sense since PbS is a narrow bandgap semiconductor (infra-red) and the quantum confinement would lead to widening of this gap. From a colour point of view, I imagine that the pre-exposure film will be fairly colourless but, provided we can get a sufficiently high density of nanoparticles, after exposure to the H2S, we might see a pink/red colour maybe? Time will tell.....

Secondly, this morning, Mark (another PhD student of mine) started some I-V measurements of gold nanoparticle LS films using the new interdigitated electrodes he's designed and made. We now have a range of gap sizes between the fingers so we can look at field effects as well as basic I-V properties. The other main progress we can make with these electrodes is that I-V's will be measurable with alkanethiol-capped gold cores which are inherently less conducting than our usual methylbenzenethiol-capped nanoparticles. Our 25 micron gap size previously meant that currents from the alkanethiols were too small to measure. So watch this space for a ton of results from Mark over the next few months.

Well, that's it for this morning - it's sandwich time now and Jez at "John's Van" is dependent on me for his summer holiday! A plus, Tim

First blogging

Hello everyone

This is my first blog ever. Just testing what happens when I post something.

BW Tim