Interestingly, there’s an item posted with today’s (April 8, 2010) date on the Nanowerk website from HP Labs reiterating the ‘memristor as a fourth circuit element’ concept that Forrest H Bennett has convincingly argued against first in his comments to my original posting (April 5, 2010) and, at greater length, in yesterday’s (April 7, 2010) interview.

Oddly, the item on Nanowerk, which I’m assuming is a news release from HP Labs as no author is listed, mostly regurgitates the HP Labs work on the memristor.

HP Labs researchers have discovered that the “memristor“ – a resistor with memory that represents the fourth basic circuit element in electrical engineering – has more capabilities than was previously thought. In addition to being useful in storage devices, the memristor can perform logic, enabling computation to one day be performed in chips where data is stored, rather than on a specialized central processing unit.

In fact, much of what’s mentioned in the news release and in the accompanying video was discussed in 2008 when they first published their work. The new excitement has been generated by a team at the University of Michigan (see April 5, 2010 posting), led by Dr. Wei Lu, who’ve proved that synapses in biological organisms behave like memristors. This means that the speculations that the HP Lab folks made in 2008 about hardware that learns are more likely.

As for the ‘fourth circuit element’ mentioned in the item, this brings me to classification schemes. These sorts of discussions can seem picayune to people who are not directly involved but classification schemes have a huge impact on how we think about the world around us and the ways in which we interact with it. For example, we think of the tomato and treat it as if it’s a vegetable when in fact, it’s a fruit. When was the last time you had some tomatoes and ice cream?

Whether the memristor is thought of as a ‘fourth circuit element’ (as per HP Labs and Dr. Leon Chua [as of 2003]) or a member of an ‘infinite periodic table of circuit elements’ (as per Forrest H Bennett) will have an impact on how memristors and other as yet unknown elements are investigated and understood.

As someone who doesn’t understand the particulars especially well, I find Forrest’s approach the more flexible one and therefore preferable. Classification schemes or models that are rigid both buckle as new information is added and tend to constrain it. For example, the Dewey decimal classification scheme used in most public libraries has been buckling under the pressure of adding new categories since the 1950s, at least. It’s the reason most academic libraries use the more flexible Library of Congress classification scheme, although that scheme has its problems too.

One final note, it seems that HP Labs is supporting the notion of a ‘fourth circuit element’ being added to the previous three (capacitors, inductors, and resistors) and they have the resources to distribute their preferred notion far and wide and repeatedly. Or as Forrest put it in one of his comments, “This “4th circuit element” business is marketing spin from HP …”

National Research Council of Canada Insights

In the wake of John McDougall’s appointment as the new president of the Canada’s National Research Council (NRC), Rob Annan over at the Don’t Leave Canada Behind blog has written a very important (if Canadian science policy interests you) piece about NRC.  Rob traces the organization from its beginnings.  From the posting,

The NRC was founded more than 90 years ago to advise the government on matters related to science and technology. It evolved into a federal research laboratory with the construction of the Sussex Dr. labs in the 1930s, and was the focus of Canada’s research efforts during WWII. Post-war, the NRC expanded and was a major source of Canadian research success, with notable achievements like the invention of the pacemaker, development of Canola and the crash position indicator.

From the 1950s through the 1970s, NRC’s success, growth, and increasing complexity led to the creation of spin-off organizations. Atomic research went to the Atomic Energy of Canada, defense research went to the Defense Research Board. Medical research funding went to the Medical Research Council, later the CIHR. Lastly, support for academic research was passed to NSERC.

All of these organizations have grown and prospered. The NRC? Not so much.

He goes on to trace developments to the present day,

The NRC has research institutes in every province in the country, from the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in BC to the Institute for Ocean Technology in Newfoundland. A total of 26 institutes across the country, covering all aspects of science and technology, and employing more than 4,000 people. It’s a broad effort and employs a lot of great scientists.

But since the 1980s, the NRC has been without a strong sense of self. Is it a basic research organization or an applied research organization? Does it exist to perform independent, government-sponsored research, or does it provide research services in support of the private sector? Does it perform early-stage research and then partner with industry, or is it a fee-for-service research organization? The answer is yes.

I encourage you to read his posting as there’s more to his history and analysis and he goes on to make some suggestions. Please don’t forget to read the comments which offer additional insights.

Dave Bruggeman (at Pasco Phronesis) also mentions Rob’s NRC posting in the context of explaining that the current US National Research Council differs greatly from the Canadian one and warns against assuming that organizations with similar names are the same. You can go read Dave’s description of the US NRC here. This is a timely reminder as the ‘reinventing technology assessment’ webcast that the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies is hosting later this month features a speaker from the US National Research Council.

Rapping biologists and physicists

While browsing on Dave’s (Pasco Phronesis) blog, I found an item that features two videos of scientists rapping. The first comes from some physicists and the second comes from biologists. I agree with Dave that the biologists have the edge since they rap in front of a live audience although both videos are quite entertaining.