Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in mad_tigger's LiveJournal:

Sunday, December 7th, 2008
1:38 am	Physics, Patents, Ethically sound places to work.... So, a little background. I work in nuclear fusion, a mythical way of producing power without nuclear waste and with abundant fuel (heavy water). Unsuprisingly this doesn't yet work, and one of the major obstacles is that you have to get your deuterium to extreme temperatures (~20 keV) to get a decent fusion burn but the fireplace in which we try to get this going can't really cope. Or rather whilst it sort of works for our current test machines it's becoming increasingly clear it won't for a full scale power plant. Despite this people's plans for new machines were very conservative small tweaks to the current designs, bigger and better for sure, but nothing groundbreaking. And unlikely to solve the problem. Enter Drs Kotschenreuther and Mahajan (and coworkers). This team at the University of Texas at Austin invented a very clever new fireplace. Yay! Huzzzah! But no, there's more. Enter also the new director of UKAEA Culham where I work , Professor Cowley. He has persuaded the British government to fund the building of this inventive new fireplace as part of a planned upgrade. All is well you say, we have someone battling the opposition to innovation and people innovating things. Now this last wednesday i went to a physics seminar at UT Austin, given by Drs Mahajan and Kotschenreuther. They've not only developed this new fireplace (the Super-X divertor), but they've spotted that whilst it does not solve all the problems associated with a pure fusion power plant, it allows you to build a really cool fusion-fission hybrid. This is a plant that not only produces power but efficiently burns waste from conventional nuclear fission plants so you don't have to bury the highly toxic waste. I entered the seminar with trepidation, this scheme could be infeasible, or implausible theory,  but no, they've thought it through and it looks very workable in the real world. Except , here comes the catch. In the acknowledgements slide of their talk, they thanked a law firm. Yes. You guessed it. The first thing these two respected scientists did when they thought up their scheme* was to slap a patent on it. In a world where  the most important changes in energy production will have to come from India and China, they slap a patent on their scheme secure in the knowledge that the WTO and the international community will  have a fit if other countries dare to try this. They and the university conspire to make a fast buck from a potential solution to the problem of ramping up conventional nuclear power production. Am I the only one here that finds this schoking? Sure , if you want to behave like that go work for Bell labs or General Atomics or similar. Wear your damn allegiance on your shirt. But from a university? Is it just that i'm not feeling the lone star spirit of Texas? Or that my views are ill-suited to this side of the atlantic? Or am I merely deluding myself that universities are a safe place to work for someone who wishes to do research for research's sake without having someone try and ``monetize'' (euch) it. And if not - where is? Selfishly  I would like to find somewhere like that and would not like to feel that my employment options were severly curtailed (even within academia) by the  ethics of the people in charge (but they inevitably will be :S).  Perhaps i should keep a weather eye upon the horizon for such activites at oxford and at Culham. To stop rambling, i'll pose a question to the lazyweb - what would you do if you were a researcher at a publically funded research institution / university and came up with such a breakthrough?  P.S. All this politically motivated frothing is not to detract from the fact that the breakthroughs mentioned above are amazing and immense academic praise should be bestowed ipon the scientists involved, they may have dragged nuclear power kicking and screaming into the 21st century.   * Possible misrepresentation here, i have no proof it was the first thing they did nor that it was their idea to engage in patenting, but they certainly weren't publically complaining.  (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 11th, 2007
11:18 pm	Meme! From rjw76 If you could go back in time and bop on the head the creator of a concept, so that idea would never come into existance... Like a film or a song... it would basically be erased completely. a) Which song? b) Which film? c) Which book? So, a) Hmmm. I'm not quite sure there's anything so deeply annoying as "I.M. Me" by that American who was so ashamed she changed her name, so that. Please don't remind me of any worse songs my subconscious has succeeded in blanking out ;) b) "I Robot" , the luddite rape of some great 20th century sci-fi. c) "The Selfish Gene" , perhaps we can nip Richard Dawkins in the bud. If we're lucky. (Took some restraint not to lay into Adam Smith here) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 9th, 2007
11:28 pm	So, resolutions are sort of holding out, and new years enthusiasm has caused the house to be cleaned, and for us to spontaneously poke the landlord (or at least the letting agent) into visiting and getting organised. Here's hoping this doesn't backfire. Also how on earth am I up so early. Aaaargh. Current Mood: barely conscious (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007
12:34 am	Resolutions Another new year, and this time I ought to make some resolutions, something I usually avoid. Well actually as I write this I ought to be asleep, but Never Mind. 1. Work more efficiently, rather than merely battering my head against its brick wall until one of us gives up. 2. See more of/stay in contact with friends who are further afield than cambridge/london. (realised whilst writing christmas cards and thinking - oooh, havent spoken to them in ages) 3. Read more literature, whilst sci-fi may be fun Dickens it ain't. 4. Stay the same waist size. 5. Thinks first, speak later. Or possibly think first then shut my stupid gob. [Added later] 6. post more relevant content to livejournal (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 28th, 2006
7:42 pm	Graduation and status Wow, it seems both far longer than 2 years 10 months since i rocked up at this madhouse named cambridge with the mildly foolish intent of doing a maths degree, and at the sam time to have gone by in the blink of an eye. It's been a legendary 3 years, and i'm sure i'll be in contact with those i've shared it with for years to come. Inevitably at times it's been harder than anyone could have imagined, especially this last few months, but we're all still here and life goes on. It's scary to watch loads of people go their separate ways, but theres a lot of us far too attached to this perverse town to leave. I'm going to be sharing a house in cambridge with the wonderful frithonthehills, zebbiejohnson and two other friends. And it's back to the grindstone of academic learning in september with part III maths. Weeeel, i probably ought to stop rambilng and get some sleep before graduation ceremony, so that's all the info you get at the moment. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006
9:03 am	I've curled up and hid in order to get some amount of serious finals panicing going. If you need to contact me before the 9th of June, please email me at ian at utumno.org.uk, or ring me. See you all in two weeks, and good luck to those also suffering exams. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 5th, 2005
4:32 pm	Well, five questions from captain_aj to answer: 1) What do you want? Wow, generality doesn't come more glib than this. Without wanting this to be taken as a pure attempt at seeming, i'ld have to say 'the usual', to be wanted. That and the ability to be a less staid and more open to new experiences. 2) In what ways do you risk your life/health for pleasure? e.g. extreme sports, unhealthy food, alcohol, smoking, other drugs Not many to tell the honest truth, about a pot of coffee a day and a few beers when i happen to be in one is about the limit. I suppose this is a lead on from my answer to the previous question, i'm naturally risk averse and tend to take the safest course without thought for excitement and adventure. 3) Do you think you're a good example for other people to follow? No, I'm a socially inept irresponsible lethargic layabout. I drink too much coffee, whittle away my spare time on IRC and now on livejournal, hold left wing policies that embody so much change that I would be terrified were they to ever come about and to top it all I'm unable to put in enough effort to make what i do try my hand at work. The list is long lillting and probably the most boring piece of self hatred to be uttered this side of a rendition of "gah I hate my life" by The Stereotypical Livejournal Users. 4) What do you fear most? Change, his brother Loss and their bastard lovechild Emotional Disorder. I fight to keep my life in as little flux as possible to the possible detriment of enjoyment and 'fun' whtever that mythical shapeshifter is masquerading as this week. 5) Why did you get a Livejournal? An experiment in seeing how willing would be to expose more of what i do the outside world, a perverse sort of self torture by exposure to ascerbic comments, scything retorts and their interactions with my perverse psyche... And partly the fact that keeping trak of what others is up to is more easily achieved through friends pages and other such gubbins. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: Beethoven's Piano Sonatas (6 Comments |Comment on this)