To be or not to be a scientist

After being in the business (ie, conducting scientific research) for long enough time, I started to think maybe I should do something else. I have had the thought since 2007. It all started from experiencing a hard time to get my ideas accepted by my peers. I wouldn’t give a damn (pardon my language) if my ideas got accepted or not if it weren’t for the fact that our career status critically depends on the number of publications and grants. It has become increasing annoying to see crappy papers get published while I have to work extra hard to get my ideas/work accepted published. It is also getting annoying that I have to educate my peers on some of the subjects that they should be familiar with. It is even annoying to find errors in the publications, and I have to ask myself why reviewers did not pick them up on these mistakes. Some mistakes are very obvious. I used to write short papers and tried to be succinct, but have been forced to elaborate on things that I thought my peers would surely know.

Now I just think the whole peer review process is nothing more than a joke. The journal ranking is also laughable. I think I should do something other than science. Doing scientific research is hard but supposedly fun as well. Now I just feel a bit sick of the mentality of the scientific community. Scientists are merely a bunch of close-minded people with a subjective view and they think their views are always in the right. Most of them don’t even dare to think outside the box. Scientists are supposed to be open-minded with an objective view. I’m simply disappointed in my peers and wonder if I should do something else that is easier to get satisfaction.

My New Year’s Eve – The Celebrity Style

These are a few pictures of fireworks taken from a mansion at the New Year’s Eve. The mansion is on top of a mountain (I think), thus providing a vintage view of the Taipei city. The tall building in the pictures is Taipei 101 building, the second tallest building on Earth (as I understand).

We were invited to attend the New Year’s Eve party hosted by the owner of the mansion. We arrived around 8 PM, and didn’t get back home until 5:30 AM the next day. I don’t recall ever being staying up so late in recent years. When we arrived, the tall gated doors were wide open. At that moment, I felt I was in a movie. Here I was in a mansion that you only see in movies. The furniture in the mansion was the French court style, very delicate, expansive, and fancy looking.

That was quite a night, eating great food (lobsters, oysters, choice meats) prepared by a restaurant chef, watching fireworks in the courtyard of a mansion on top of a mountain, surrounded by like-minded people. We had BBQ (the Chinese style, no BBQ sauce) in the rather chilly weather. It was fun, especially when I didn’t have to do the work. There were some other guests coming and going. The fireworks started at 12:00 AM exact on Jan. 1 2009, and it lasted about 180 seconds, I was told. After watching the fireworks, we went back into the mansion and stayed until close to 5 AM.

We were invited to attend a traditional lunar year-end banquet by a company’s president who was at the New Year’s Eve party and is good friends with the mansion owner. It was nice. We were sitting close to the stage. We won the 3rd prize raffle. We went up to the stage with other winners to have a picture taken. We were invited to watch the live recording of a few shows hosted by the mansion owner. It was fun. I had a good time in Taiwan. I worked during the daytime and enjoyed these activities after the working hours. My winter break ended with a flight on Business back to the States. There were too many people on Economy so I was bumped up to Business. I was praying to be bumped to Business, and my wish was answered. ;-)

My article on peer review

My article on peer review in the December issue of Physics Today can be viewed here http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_61/iss_12/14_1.shtml. The location of the PDF file is at http://link.aip.org/link/PHTOAD/v61/i12/p14/s1/pdf

I submitted my article last May. Several months had passed, and I did not hear anything from them so I thought maybe they were not interested in running the article. Then another incident prompted me to add more to the original text. I was thinking of ways to get it published. Someone suggested to me that I can publish it on a blog. I thought that was a good idea, so I followed the advice. After I created a blog and posted my article, I got an email from the editor saying that they would run my article with some modifications. They cut out quite a few things that I wanted to be heard. Nevertheless, I am happy that they would publish my article, and I hope it will make a positive change in the peer review process.

The original text of my article submitted to Physics Today is from the first half of the article on my blog (http://taiyin.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-game-rules-for-paper-review.html). You can see the original here and the finish product via the link provided in the first paragraph.

Introducing My Youtube Channel

It’s interesting that nowadays people can publish themselves in various creative ways online: showing their videos on Youtube, publishing articles on blogs, just to name a few.

After being encouraged by people, I have joined the millions that enjoy a Youtube account. I have uploaded the first part of my interview on my Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/profhuang). The video is named “A day with Professor Huang – Part 1.” The other two parts will be uploaded soon after some editing.

The interview was a student project for the students enrolled in the English Technical Writing course in spring 2008. I chaired the Research and Scholarship Committee and thought this could be a very educational and interesting project for the students. So I talked to the instructor to see if she could incorporate the faculty interview project into the course curriculum as part of the student assignments. She kindly integrated that in her class. The students utilized the equipment in Digital Commons to videotape and edit the interviews with the technical assistance from the instructional services specialist in Digital Commons. Altogether, there were eight faculty members participating in this project. There is a credit page at the end of the interview, so those who were involved in the project get proper credit for their efforts.

My interview was filmed in February. I hadn’t had enough time to shake off the extra pounds I gained from my trip to Taiwan. The cover photo was taken in chilly weather, so I looked a bit funny in that photo. All in all, it was fun to be interviewed and filmed by the students. I had thought I would feel uneasy in front of the camera, but it turned out to be good. I felt rather relaxed and comfortable with it and the interviewers, probably because two of them were my students. So no pressure there!

Here is the second part of the interview by students.

Part 1 was done by Chris Lai, part 2 by Chris Albright, and the last parts by Martin Hekmati.



Here are the third and the last part of the interview.

The Secret To My Time Management

Nowadays it seems everybody has a lot on his plate. It is not just adults that are super busy and forget things. In recent years I have noticed that an increasing number of students have become quite forgetful about deadlines, assignments, or appointments. Are people really really that busy that they tend to forget about things? I too have a lot on my plate, but so far I have been able to finish things ahead of time most of the time. So the core of their problem for failing to beat the deadlines is probably that they need an efficient method to keep a record and keep track of their tasks. I think it is a matter of time management and the matter of know-how.

When I first became a faculty member, life was hectic. I had meetings to go to, papers or meeting abstracts to submit before deadlines, student appointments, and etc. It was very difficult to remember each and every one of the things. The 3M post-it notes were good, but they were scattered everywhere on my desk or computer screen. I didn’t like it. I bought a pocket-size two-year monthly planner, and I found it very useful. I wrote deadlines or appointments in my planner. But that was not enough, because the planner was small that I could not write every single task in it. So in addition to a planner, I started writing down a to-do list on a personalized notepad, one page at a time. Ever since then, I managed to keep track of things.

The size of the notepad is 5.5’’x8.5’’. I write down the things I need to do on the page when I still remember them, and I cross them out when I finish the tasks. Normally I would run out of the space on both sides every two or three weeks. This is simple and efficient, but to my surprise, most of the people do not do that. The planner and the to-do list have helped me keep track of everything and enabled me to finish things ahead of time. It has been working very well for me, and that’s more it gives me a sense of accomplishments when I see the items crossed out on my to-do list. It is a successful time management mechanism for me.

Hunting for Sprites

Here are the two incidents of sprites that I captured last Friday (Sept. 19).

I had never thought I could observe sprites at home in front of a computer! The Danish National space Institute installed two camera observing systems at two locations – one on Pic Du Midi in Pyrenees and one on Monte Corona in Corsica. The camera systems can be operated remotely as long as there is a computer and internet connection, and they are controlled via the Danish National Space Institute. The Institute hosts a site where people can view real time images and maps of thunderstorm locations from a satellite. I signed up to be part of a group of interested scientists who would like to participate in the 2008 EuroSprite Observational campaign.

My first observation period started on Monday September 15 through Sunday September 22. In the first two days of my observations, there were not many lightning activities. On the 3rd day (Wednesday), there was a huge thunderstorm system. I spent a few hours on my laptop, following the lightning activity and pointing the cameras to where positive lightning occurred. On Thursday, I accidentally looked at a page in the EuroSprite manual and noticed that I forgot to key in an important command that would be needed to trigger images. I felt like a goof. It is like sitting behind the wheel stepping on gas and thought I was driving while the engine was not even turned on. Thursday was not good for hunting because the cameras on Pic Du Midi were not cooperating and the cameras on Monte Corona were too far away from the thunderstorm. Friday was the only good day for sprite hunting. It was exhilarating to see the sprites that I captured though I was exhausted after hours in front of my laptop. So during the whole week, I only captured two incidents of sprites with the cameras on Monte Corona.

Though the pictures were not close-up shots (I’m a new user so I still have lots to learn how to get a better shot), I’m pleased to have at least captured something. It was fun and interesting. This could be a great project for my students!

LITEs

Below is an extract from the article “On the Lightning Induced Transient Emissions in the OH Airglow Layer Observed by ISUAL Instrument Onboard FORMOSAT-II Satellite” by Tai-Yin Huang1, C. Y. Chiang2, C. L. Kuo3, A. B. Chen2, H. T. Su2, and R. R. Hsu2. Click here http://www.lv.psu.edu/tuh4/LITEs. for the full article. For article citation, please use http://taiyin.blogspot.com/2008/09/LITEs

1. Department of Physics, The Pennsylvania State University Lehigh Valley, Fogelsville, PA 18051, USA
2. Physics Department, Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan
3. Institute of Space Science, National Central University, Chung-Li, Taiwan

Abstract

Observations by The Imager of Sprites and Upper Atmospheric Lightning (ISUAL) broadband filter onboard the FORMOSAT-II satellite have sometimes shown a transient brightness in or below the OH airglow layer accompanied by lightning activity. The ISUAL team conducted a nine-day campaign in January 2007 with some of the observations devoted exclusively to capturing lightning-induced transient emissions (LITEs) with a narrowband filter for such investigations. The observations of lightning-induced intensity enhancements in the OH airglow layer with a narrowband filter presented here are the first and only narrowband observations currently in existence. Our analysis of the narrow-band observations shows that there is a significant intensity increase (87.5%) in the OH airglow layer when there is lightning activity and a residual intensity increase (25%) in post lightning activity. Three mechanisms are proposed to explain the airglow enhancements.

This image shows an intensity enhancement in the OH airglow induced by lightning captured by a broadband filter (623-750 nm).




This image shows an intensity enhancement in OH airglow induced by lightning captured by a narrowband filter centered at 630 nm.

We propose three mechanisms to explain the lightning-induced transient emissions (LITEs) in the OH airglow.

ISUAL’s broadband filter has also captured LITEs below the OH airglow layer like the one below.