Freelancing Rules of Thumb

I don’t strictly agree with everything Walk Kania writes here, but in general, it rings true:

Freelancing Rules of Thumb | The Freelancery.

If I was to add a single comment, I might say something that Mr. Kania takes for granted: Remember that you are in business. Most freelance science writers I have known who have chosen to stop science writing have plenty enough scientific background and accuracy (although God help you if you don’t), and sufficient quality of writing (when pitched to the correct market), but terrible business skills. Marketing, maintaining current clients and regularly chasing new clients, as well as keeping track of time and overhead and invoices (and paid invoices) and taxes are all part of the job. Not the glamorous part, but a necessary part.

If that doesn’t break your will to be a freelance science writer, just spend a couple days looking for affordable family health insurance for the self-employed.

More about how bumblebees fly

It’s the flexible joint in the bee’s wings — which means the original fixed-wing calculation that “proved” bumblebees couldn’t fly was a very wrong assumption — that provides lift. See Video: Flexible Wings Give Bumblebees a Lift – ScienceNOW.

Or see just the video at: Bumblebee flight tests

Olivia & the Experiments

Science writer (and friend of mine) Mary Alexandra Agner wrote a Kickstarter-funded collection of young adult stories called Olivia & the Experiments.

These are, Mary explains, “four stories telling the adventures of Olivia, intrepid girl scientist, as she has a run-in with an NMRI machine, gets up close and personal with an onion nuclear membrane, resurrects Dorothy Hodgkin’s Nobel-prize winning work, and solves a puzzle with a only a telescope and clear seeing.”

The book is available in several e-formats on her page:

Mary Alexandra Agner’s webpage.

The webpage also includes an excerpt of one story.

Random Scattered Photons Can Be Coordinated

Another story that I wrote a while back for Optics & Photonics News: Random Scattered Photons Can Be Coordinated.

The Christmas Revels at Sanders Theater (Cambridge MA), 14 December 2012 « The Green Man Review

I wrote two reviews that appears over the holidays in Green Man Review:

The Christmas Revels at Sanders Theater (Cambridge MA), 14 December 2012

And the CD that accompanies this year’s Revels show: Strike the Harp: An Irish Christmas Revels.

Breaking battery news, big ambitions

“The goal is to develop batteries that are 5 times more powerful, 5 times cheaper, within 5 years.”

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Energy agreed to fund a 5-year $120 million research center to develop better batteries and energy storage. (Both for transportation and the grid.) Members include national lab, academic, and industrial partners.

I am watching a press conference in Chicago, still going on, to announce the news.

Batteries are a $42 billion dollar industry. Japan and South Korea are major players in the field and are accelerating their support for research.

DoE Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu is speaking. Chu talks about how, during wartime when results (ie, get the science out of the lab into manufacturable objects) had to be produced as fast as possible, it was important to put the best scientists next to the best engineers across disciplines. The battery and energy storage hub will take the same approach. He says, “Okay, you just gotta do what Oppenheimer … Fermi… Seaborg did… no pressure.”

The center, called JCESR, will bring together some of the most advanced energy storage research programs in the U.S. today. Other national labs partnering with Argonne include Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. University partners include Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of Illinois-Chicago, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, and University of Michigan. Four industrial partners have also joined to help clear a path to the marketplace for the advances developed at JCESR, including Dow Chemical Company; Applied Materials, Inc.; Johnson Controls, Inc.; and Clean Energy Trust.

“Because of the hybrid car batteries,” Chu says, the technology in your computers has improved, you have, “two-fold better batteries, just in the last two years.”

DoE Press Release ( http://energy.gov/articles/team-led-argonne-national-lab-selected-doe-s-batteries-and-energy-storage-hub )

The press conference ( http://www.ustream.tv/argonnelive )

X-ray Optics Eye Solar Flares

An x-ray telescope with innovative optics was launched into space for a short trip (only 6 minutes) in early November. During it’s mission, it took a look at our sun. Read more about it in my article for Optics & Photonics News:X-ray Optics Eye Solar Flares.

Cover story on Thin-Film Photovoltaics

I wrote the cover story for the November issue of Optics & Photonics News. I had the pleasure of speaking with people all over the world about how nanostructures can increase the efficiency of solar cells, although the field is still in it’s infancy. One of my favorite quotes from the story is from Thomas Krauss at University of St. Andrews. He explains:

“Photovoltaics research is turning from a materials problem into a photonics problem.”

 

The feature is available for free, for a short while, on the Optical Society of America’s website. Go read! Thin-Film Photovoltaics: Making Every Photon Count.

Surfaces that stay bright and dry -like butterfly wings

I wish I could run this picture in a larger size, because it is just gorgeous! Researcher Shu Yang at U. Penn (and her grad students) has developed a simple method to create surfaces that — like butterfly wings — contain both structural color (ie, the color we see depends on the way light interacts with the surface, rather than on colorants on the surface) and that repel water. There are lots of potential uses for such surfaces. Right now she has a grant to develop coatings for solar cells. Read more in my story: Optics & Photonics News – Creating Surfaces That Stay Bright and Dry.

Fish hide inside their skin

Usually reflective surfaces change the polarization of light in a predictable way, and some aquatic predators use that property to look for food. But fish skin is complex enough that reflected light isn’t clearly polarized, and thus the fish are less visible and less likely to end up as lunch.

Fish skin structure explains biological cloaking.

By the way, coverage of this story has includes ridiculous (“rubbish” as my English editor says) claims that the fish skin breaks the laws of physics. I can only assume that the writer was overenthusiastic and untutored in science. The article linked here claims “biological cloaking” which also seems like a bit of a stretch. What is really going on with the fish skin is that it is camouflaged in ways that we can’t see with human eyes.