SciBlogs

Archive January 2010

Who hid the Higgs? Shaun Hendy Jan 29

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I had a lot of fun being interviewed by Bryan Crump on Radio NZ on Monday evening about why particle physicists have had such trouble finding the Higgs boson.  If you missed it and are interested, you can listen to the audio here.

It was a good opportunity to highlight some of the wonderful stuff going on at CERN, even if the catalyst for the interview verged on the frivolous.  As you’ll hear if you listen to the interview, Holger Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya proposed in a recent paper that production of the Higgs might be suppressed by some exotic non-local physics.  This was colourfully described in the New York Times as sabotage from the future. 

In the interview, I characterised their speculations as mathematical philosophy, although perhaps it is a bit more subtle than that:  their prediction that production of the Higgs specifically might be suppressed is actually falsifiable.  We’ve built the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and in three to four years, most particle physicists believe that we’ll either have found it, or else have sufficient data to conclude that it doesn’t exist.  Either outcome will falsify their prediction.

As pointed out by Sean Carroll though, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why it should be the Higgs in particular that is suppressed in this way, even if it is a mathematical possibility.  If we find the Higgs, then perhaps it’s the neutralino (the hypothetical supersymmetric partner of the neutrino) that’s being suppressed, and so on.  In this way, the theory underlying Nielsen and Ninomiya’s prediction is not itself falsifiable. 

If physics had a propensity for this type of non-locality though, I think we’d have a lot more missing pieces in our description of the Universe.  I’m also not impressed by the card game suggested to test this (pick a card from a million card deck, where just one says “Don’t build the LHC”).  There are plenty of ways to not find the Higgs other than falling victim to a spot of bad luck in a card game.  Perhaps the Universe should have avoided evolving physicists in the first place? 

Anyway, I’ve been invited to appear every 5-6 weeks on Nights on Radio NZ in the Thursday science slot at 8.45pm.  I will be trying my best to mix fun and fact, and I am happy to consider any suggestions readers might have for topics to discuss with Bryan. 

I will leave the last word to a Radio NZ listener who sent in a text during the interview: “If the Swiss can build a 27km long tunnel for $8bn, how come we can’t build a tunnel under the harbour for $3bn?”.

CRI bibliometric performance: Part I Shaun Hendy Jan 26

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In a post last year, I looked at New Zealand’s bibliometric productivity in the university and government research sectors using data from the SCImago bibliometric site.  Over the next few weeks, I will report on some further bibliometric analyses using the Thompson Reuters Web of Science.  While providing substantially the same New Zealand-wide results as SCImago, the Web of Science database also allows me to break down publication data by research institute (and by individual author if needed).  Unfortunately, it is not freely accessible – I have institutional access through Victoria University of Wellington.

I’ll start this series of posts by looking at the total published outputs of the Crown Research Institutes (CRIs).  The CRIs were established in 1992 by scientists from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), the research division of the then Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and the New Zealand Forestry Service.  Shortly thereafter, a significant portion of the Crown funding for science became contestable through the Public Good Science Fund, open to the CRIs, universities, and businesses or other organisations conducting research and development.

At the time, the restructuring of government science into the CRIs was highly controversial.  ‘Is New Zealand shooting itself in the brain?’ wrote New Scientist magazine.  ‘A small country does something like this at its peril’ said John Stocker, chief executive of Australia’s main research organisation, the CSIRO*.  The DSIR had given the world Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, earthquake resistant lead-rubber bearings for building foundations and high-temperature superconductors, yet the Government of the day thought that the new Institutes would be better placed to contribute to New Zealand’s economic growth.

Almost two decades later, our new Government is wondering how the experiment went.  While the government scrutinises CRI balance sheets closely, other aspects of CRI performance receive very little attention.  This is surprising, since the reason the crown owns such research institutes has nothing to do with their balance sheets at all.    CRI total publications

Here I will look at how the CRIs have performed bibliometrically, starting with their total published output from the year following their establishment. The figure on the left shows the number of papers in the Web of Science database published by scientists at the CRIs since 1993. It can be seen that the annual number of publications doubled from 600 in 1993 to 1200 in 1997, a level where it has remained to the present.  The increase in output from 1993 to 1997 was substantial, but how was it achieved?

CRI productivityThe next figure shows the total researcher FTEs in the CRI sector from 1994-2006, and the corresponding productivity (in papers per FTE) over the same time period.  Researcher FTEs increased from 1996 to 2002, but have then declined by 20% since their peak in 2002.  Note that the productivity of researchers, in papers per FTE, remains relatively static over the period in question.  This largely reflects the New Zealand situation as a whole, where productivity has remained steady, and changes in levels of published outputs have been driven by changes in FTEs.

(Update: I received some better FTE data from Statistics NZ so the figure above was replaced on 18 March 2010. The data is similar to that shown in the original figure, but with the addition of the 2008 data, we see there was large jump in researcher FTE from 2006 to 2008, reversing the decline since 2002).

In my next post on the CRIs, I will look at how the number of citations of their papers have changed over time.  I will then look at how the CRIs have been able to lift their researcher FTEs from 1300 in 1994 to over 1800 in 2006.  After that I will move on to the Universities.

* Australia still has the CSIRO, and although some reforms have taken place since John Stocker made his comments, Australia has resisted introducing the direct competition between CSIRO and university scientists that has characterised our science system.

CRI bibliometric performance: Part II
CRI bibliometric performance: Part III

Top patenting organisations in New Zealand: some stats Shaun Hendy Jan 22

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In a post a few weeks ago, there was a discussion on the value of patents. Sciblogs reader Bruce Hamilton pointed out that the value of an abandoned patent could simply be as an output for a funding agency. Could it be then the requirements of funding agencies for outputs is driving patenting activities? Bruce has put together a selection of statistics from IPONZ looking at patenting activity in some of New Zealand’s research organisations, both public and private. Bruce did not intend the list below to be exhaustive, but he has covered a selection of Universities, CRIs, large private companies and smaller start-ups. It’s very interesting to see who some of our top patenting organisations are, and how many of them have patents in progress.

Number Aborted (%) In Progress (%) Completed (%)
Fisher & Paykel 424 60 2 38
Uniservices 388 66 14 21
Industrial Research Limited 374 66 5 29
Agresearch 210 55 12 33
Fletcher 201 41 9 50
Carter Holt Harvey 186 56 9 35
Fonterra 143 43 17 39
Otago University 100 77 4 19
Gallagher Group 83 43 12 48
Massey University 76 55 8 37
Genesis R&D Corp 45 36 11 56
IGNS 37 58 6 36
Otago Innovation 18 50 17 33
Syft Technologies 15 57 0 43
Blis Technologies 13 64 0 36

Aborted = Abandoned + Voided Pre-acceptance
In Progress = Filed, Examination, Accepted
Completed = Granted, Expired or Not Renewed.

At least in this data set, it does look like public organisations abort more of their patents than their private counterparts. However, public research organisations are charged with disseminating their research findings through journal articles or presentations at scientific conferences. Once a piece of research has entered the public domain, it can no longer be patented, so public research organisations may chose to protect their IP by filing a provisional patent prior to publishing or presenting their work. This gives them the option of proceeding with a full patent within the next year should they choose to do so, while allowing them to publish their work. Private research organisations, under less pressure to publish, can simply choose to not release their findings while they decide whether a piece of work is worth the expense of filling a full patent.

Thanks to Bruce for taking the time to extract this interesting data.

Giving a great scientific talk Shaun Hendy Jan 18

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In the Southern hemisphere, conference season is just a week or two away.  Graduate students south of the equator are beginning to get that sinking feeling.  They’ve been dreading it for weeks, and their data only came through the day before.  Yes, it’s the thing a student fears most:  the conference talk.

Do I need to stress that your conference talk is very important?  When you give a scientific presentation, you present yourself as well as your results. If it goes well, potential post-doctoral supervisors in the audience will take note. If it goes really well, it will put you in the running for the prize for best student talk. If it goes really, really well, your supervisor will think of you when they realise that the all-expenses paid plenary talk in Hawaii they said yes to six months ago, falls on the day of their daughter’s first ballet recital.

Now that you are relaxed (no pressure), here are my top ten tips for a great first scientific talk:

  1. Enthusiam. Let your enthusiasm for your subject come through.  I’ve put this tip first for a reason – your audience will forgive many faults if you can infect them with your excitement for your topic.
  2. Interaction. Interact with your audience (although not by forgetting the laser pointer is on and dazzling the audience with it).  Make eye contact with people around the room from the outset and keep it – you are talking to the audience, so don’t read from your slides.  Avoid referring to notes. Pitch your voice so that those in the back of the room can hear; if necessary, ask whether you can be heard at the back right at the start.
  3. Ownership. Take ownership of your work.  Acknowledge the contribution of your colleagues as appropriate, but don’t motivate your work by saying your supervisor told you to do it!
  4. Audience. Think about your audience and remember that they have come to your talk to learn something. Make sure what you say is clear and understandable. Even the experts in the room will be impressed by an authoritative introduction to the topic. Leave your audience with a key message or two that will trigger their memories in six months’ time.
  5. Timing. Finish your talk within the time allocated, leaving time for questions.  Your audience may need to change sessions or find the toilet between talks.  Give them a fighting chance.
  6. Preparation. Practise your talk a couple of times, but remember that adrenalin will make it faster on the day.  Turn up before your session starts to make sure you know how everything works.  If you have your own laptop, practise making the transition in the auditorium, although this does not always guarantee it will work in the heat of the moment – best to have it on a memory stick just in case.  Consider preloading your talk onto the in-house machine (but check the fonts) or even another speaker’s laptop.
  7. Slides. Use strong, dark colours on a white background.  Better to give people a picture or a graphic before you launch into the detail, rather than after.  The text on your slides should be sufficiently concise to be self-explanatory, but no more.  Don’t go overboard with in-slide animations, they distract the audience and you will regret it as you wile away the time toggling through them.
  8. Equations. You should always talk through the terms in any equation you present, so a slide packed with equations will eat lot of time and bore your audience.  Presenting an unfamiliar equation without defining the variables for the audience is pointless, but remember it will take time to define these in the first place.  In other words, think carefully about your use of equations.
  9. Check your slides. Use a spell checker!  You’ll find it disconcerting (and potentially embarrassing) to spot mistakes when you are presenting.  It’s also worthwhile discovering the correct pronunciation of the name of the professor who wrote the seminal paper in your field – you will thank me when you learn she’s chairing your session.
  10. Questions. Everyone in the audience will sympathise when that awkward question comes up – we’ve all been there – so it’s OK to confess your ignorance or deflect (e.g. “Lets talk about that in the break”).  Nine times out of ten, your “awkward” questioner will have the wrong end of the stick – a chat with them after the talk can be a much better way of finding this out than a lengthy exchange in the auditorium.

Good luck! And yes, it does get easier.

How the US lost its lead in science and technology Shaun Hendy Jan 15

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Having bailed out Wall Street last year, the US is now looking for new industries to kick start its economy. However, many observers feel that the US may have squandered its technological lead over the rest of the world:  the US trade balance in high technology products has fallen steadily into the red over the last decade, from US$5.3bn in surplus in 2001 to to more than US$50bn in deficit by 2007.  What went wrong?

Many commentators point to the outsourcing of high-tech production as the root cause of the US decline. It has been argued that innovation in many industries is most effectively transmitted by face-to-face contact. This favours clustering, where, as Michael Porter has observed, companies in similar industries find it advantageous to be geographic co-located, to allow information flow between organisations.

In the Harvard Business Review, Gary Pisano and Willy Shih generalise this concept. They see the collective R&D, engineering, and manufacturing capabilities of a nation as an industrial commons. Each firm benefits from the existence of the commons, and each contributes to the commons through its know-how in R&D and production. In fact, they argue that flow of information between the shop floor and the lab is vital to the commons. As Gregory Tassey from NIST puts it:

“… co-location of R&D and manufacturing is especially important because it means the value added from both R&D and manufacturing will accrue to the innovating economy, at least when the technology is in its formative stages. This phenomenon occurs because much of the knowledge produced in the early phases of a technology’s life cycle is tacit in nature and such knowledge transfers most efficiently through personal contact.”

J. Technol. Transfer (2008) 33:560–578

Despite this, it may make sense at the individual firm level to split R&D and production by outsourcing. Firms that choose to outsource may improve their profitability in the short term, but at the same time this capability is lost to the commons. Pisano and Shih argue that the US industrial commons has been eroded to the point where US firms have lost their competitive advantage in innovation.

The weakening of the US industrial commons has been blamed on the rise of a managerial class in corporate America, who, in search of short term financial efficiencies, have outsourced production on a massive scale and dismantled their large industrial labs. For example, the Kindle cannot actually be manufactured in the US, even if Amazon wanted to do so – the technological capacity now exists only overseas. Bell Labs, the organisation that gave the world the transistor and the photovoltaic cell, began the decade with more than 30,000 staff; today, under the ownership of Alcatel-Lucent, it has less than 1,000.

Even the US government has retreated from its support of research and development as shown below:US R&D spend

Pisano and Shih make two suggestions as to how the US can turn things around:

•    The government must alter the way it supports both basic and applied scientific research to promote the kind of broad collaboration of business, academia, and government needed to tackle society’s big problems.

•    Corporate management must overhaul its practices and governance structures so they no longer exaggerate the payoffs and discount the dangers of outsourcing production and cutting investments in R&D.

The question remains:  does the US have the energy, ingenuity and cold hard cash to rebuild its industrial commons?

World Economic Forum: New Zealand is failing to innovate Shaun Hendy Jan 11

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In its 2009 report on global competitiveness, the World Economic Forum identified lack of innovation as one of the key weaknesses in the New Zealand economy. Drilling down into their report, they rate New Zealand’s strengths in innovation as

  • the quality of our research institutions,
  • our collaboration between universities and industries,

and its weaknesses as

  • lack of business spending on R&D,
  • low availability of scientists and engineers,
  • lack of government procurement of high-tech products and services,
  • lack of patenting.

I have previously discussed the relationship between our lack of spending on R&D and our patenting: our patent data shows that these are strongly correlated. There is much more to be said about this – as the New Zealand Institute’s Rick Bowen points on in the Herald, just blindly increasing our R&D spending will not necessarily lead to improved outcomes.

Yet the power law that describes the tail of New Zealand’s patent distribution among applicants is the same as that of Australia, Finland and the United States. This suggests to me that commercialisation of science is hard where ever you are, not just in New Zealand. Perhaps it looks harder here – as a small country we have fewer successes to celebrate (although see Paul Callaghan’s book Wool to Weta).

I have also discussed the lack of scientists and engineers (despite their significant earning premiums once out of university), and this will no doubt come up again. In particular, there is a mismatch between the biotech focus of our sci-tech graduates and make up of our top 100 technology companies.

One thing I haven’t discussed yet in this blog is the role of government procurement in innovation. This has been on my mind since I read Making Silicon Valley by Christophe Lacuyer last year. I was aware of the role that Stanford University and the first modern venture capitalists played in the development of Silicon Valley, but I had not understood how important US military procurement was in nurturing it through its first 40 years. In his book, Lacuyer convincingly makes the case that Silicon Valley would not exist today without many years of patronage by the US military. Could the New Zealand government do more through procurement to build up high-tech manufacturing?

What are patents good for? Shaun Hendy Jan 08

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I’ve spent a lot of time in this blog analysing the distribution of patents both geographically and amongst companies. In this post I’ll briefly look at the value of a patent, firstly from the perspective of the inventor, and then from society’s point of view.

A patent for an invention protects its inventor from being scooped by other inventors by granting a monopoly for the use of the invention for a fixed period of time. Inventors need to pay the bills, so this monopoly provides an opportunity to receive a return on the time, effort and capital expended in producing the invention. The inventor can obtain this return on investment by commercially exploiting the invention themselves, by licensing the use of the invention to others or by selling the patent. Often the costs of producing the invention will have been met by an employer or investor, giving them a share of the patent from the outset.

Granting monopolies is not something we do lightly in free market economies, as we recognise that monopolists are likely to exploit their position by pricing above the market. Indeed, pharmaceutical companies are often heavily criticised for this, reducing availability of the latest drugs to the less well off. However, without the potential for monopolistic profits, the drug companies argue that they would not be prepared to invest in the risky business of drug discovery in the first place. A patent is a social compromise.

But there is another benefit to society that in the long run may be just as important. To be granted the patent, the inventor must publically disclose the workings of their invention as completely as possible. This allows others to improve on the invention, speeding the innovative process, and ensures that the invention will be available to all once the patent expires. Now the inventor must compromise – without disclosure, secrecy may allow the retention of the inventor’s monopoly for a longer period.

Not all inventors will accept the trade-off inherent in a patent. Inventors can always choose to try to exploit their invention by keeping key details secret e.g. the infamous Coca Cola recipe. However, more and more these days, inventors are also releasing their inventions to the public for free e.g. open source software development. In this case the inventor will either need to rely on an alternative business model, or will have to get a day job!