In several cases, however, we will see that the best opportunities–for both commercial and academic actors–lay in moving probe microscopy away from marketable applications.

…

That is, a market for probe microscopy developed not because th probe-microscopy community’s members focused solely on applied research with commercial value, but because the community’s members were moving in many directions at one. Probe microscopists pursued almost every gradation of basic and applied, curiosity-driven and problem-driven research.

Another interesting idea that came up early in the book is the ability for small university labs to pursue research which can have huge economic potential, and the impact of this on the academia-industry interface.

On the whole, a nice one (even though I have hardly read ten pages) and strongly recommended!

One of my concerts of patriotic songs during the 50th year of Independence was released as an album. And the album cover has me wearing a Gandhi cap!

But the album is elusive!

NB: Any pointers will be appreciated!

My own introduction to Conan Doyle happened through Amar Chitra Katha classics (The Hound of Baskervilles) and Poonthalir (The lost world). And, I have been a fan ever since, though, I read the originals in English much later.

Finally, for what it is worth, here is my tribute to Doyle.

For too long, the measurement of scientific contribution has centered on the publication. Whether through the number of articles, the citations those articles have by other articles, or even other far more complicated metrics, most scientists are still measured by a derivative of the research article, the basic technology of scientific publishing that is well over 300 years old.

But science is much more than that. It’s ultimately about being involved in making discoveries and creating new knowledge. It’s creating data, helping others, commenting on previous work, and even using Twitter and blogging. If you help someone out or mentor a student, isn’t that worthwhile as well? How can we begin to measure a person such as Szilard?

Let’s take the example of being helpful. Alexander Oettl of Georgia Tech has studied the importance of this trait, despite its lack of appreciation. He combed through acknowledgments within the immunology literature, in order to find the most helpful scientists — those who read article drafts, provide helpful research advice, or even just act as sounding boards for ideas. And then he looked at what happened when these extremely helpful people died.

Oettl found that even if these people had only been moderately productive when it came to actually authoring papers, the productivity of their collaborators dropped by over 10 percent when these cooperative scientists died. Unfortunately, while simply being helpful is an important contribution to science, it often gets overlooked in academia.

A nice one. Take a look.

The piece reminded me of something that I read more than an year ago — Joseph Fox’s short note in DelawareOnline on Richard Heck’s Chemistry Nobel Prize in 2010. In the context of Arbesman’s article, I believe it is worth quoting from Fox’s note:

But what makes the Nobel to Heck even more inspiring is the absolute purity of the award. Heck has always been exceedingly modest about his accomplishments. Never self-promoting, Heck always gave generous credit to others in his field, and he never engaged in the politics of science. Rather, Heck devoted himself solely to chemistry, and made his contributions at the most fundamental level. As someone who was truly ahead of the curve, it took decades for the scientific community to fully appreciate the significance of his fundamental contributions: Heck’s seminal studies were conducted in the late 1960’s, but he did not receive a major award for his work until 2004. Yet, his day has come, and to see Heck recognized on this grandest of stages is absolutely remarkable. Something is right in the world when the Nobel prize goes to such a modest individual, based so purely on merit. It reminds me of why I went into science in the first place.

PS: I got the link to Arbesman’s piece via Doug at Nanoscale views. And, hat tip to Prof. Fox for sending me a soft copy of his editorial note!

The standard measure of inequality is the Gini coefficient. It is equal to one if all income goes to one person; if one woman owned everyone in an economy, fed them what she liked and made them work according to her will, if all income belonged to her and everyone else was her slave, the Gini coefficient in her monarchy would be one. If, on the other hand, everyone got exactly the same income, the Gini coefficient would be zero.

If people are ranged from the poorest to the richest, and if the cumulative proportion of the population is plotted against the cumulative proportion of income it commands, one gets a Lorenz curve. If everyone got the same income, the proportion of income and the proportion of population would be the same, and a graph of one against the other would be a 45-degree straight line. If all the income went to one person, the graph would hug the x-axis till it reached that last person, and then rise vertically. The ratio of the area between the Lorenz curve and the 45-degree line to the total area under the line is the Gini coefficient.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has recently been looking at trends in income inequality. The countries with least unequal incomes amongst those for which OECD got data (mostly for 2008) are the Czech Republic and Scandinavian countries — Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland — all with Gini coefficients of 0.25 or less. Czech Republic was communist; the Scandinavians have extremely progressive taxation, and their people are honest in paying taxes. The countries with most unequal income are Mexico, Turkey, the US and Israel, with Gini coefficients of 0.48, 0.42 and 0.38 and 0.38 respectively. Most OECD countries cluster in the range of 0.25 to 0.33.

Take a look (I find, by Googling, that Gini coefficient of India is about 0.325 at present and it is increasing).

It would appear therefore that the people of India are destined to oscillate endlessly between the two poles of constitutionalism and populism without ever discarding the one or the other.

I got a reference to the article from Ram Guha, who is hopeful in spite of what Beteille has to say:

But we must live in hope. Perhaps, in reflecting in the New Year on the events of the last half of 2011, elected politicians may be compelled to honour their Constitutional obligations more seriously. And perhaps, on the other side, civil society activists will now act with more sobriety and less self-righteousness. To both sides I urge a close reading of the full text of André Béteille’s essay, published, under the title ‘Constitutional Morality’, in the issue of the Economic and Political Weekly dated October 4, 2008. In my view, the essay should be mandatory reading for all thinking, reflective, Indians, in whose ranks I would (hopefully and generously) include the likes of Kapil Sibal, P Chidambaram, Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj, Arvind Kejriwal, and Kiran Bedi.

Take a look, and if possible, get hold of Beteille’s piece; as Guha notes, he wrote it before the ascendancy of Team Anna!