eannpatterson

[eannpatterson]

Subconscious awareness of the erosion of individuality

One impact of publishing a monthly post instead of the weekly one I used to produce [see ‘600th post and time for a change‘, on January 3rd 2024], is that I often starting writing without any memory of the recent posts.  So, I have only just noticed that, ignoring the posts on technical topics, all my posts this year have been on the theme of what it means to be an individual [see ‘Is the…

[eannpatterson]

Are we individuals?

It has been estimated that there are 150 species of bacteria in our gut with a megagenome correspondingly larger than the human genome; and that 90% of the cells in our bodies are bacterial [1].  This challenges a simple understanding of individual identity because on one level we are a collection of organisms, mainly bacteria, rather than a single entity.  The complexity is almost…

[eannpatterson]

Its all in the mind

We all exist in our own minds where we construct a world based on our proprioceptive and mental experiences.  I have written previously about the accumulation of experiences over time leading to the building of our consciousness [see ‘Is there a real ‘you’ or ‘I’?’ on March 6th 2019].  In Jonathan Coe’s recent novel, ‘The Proof of Innocence’ during a tiff between a young couple on a train…

[eannpatterson]

Reproducibility in science and technology

It has been suggested that there is crisis in science concerning the reproducibility of data [1].  New research findings are usually published based on data collected only by the group reporting the new findings, which raises the probability of bias in the results as well as reducing their likely validity.  It also creates a temptation to tamper with or falsify data given the incentives to…

[eannpatterson]

Is the autonomous individual ceasing to exist?

Society consists of a series of bubbles.  A century or so ago, your bubble was largely defined by where you lived, your village or neighbourhood, because few people travelled any significant distance and you probably knew everyone living around you.  A decade or so ago, your bubble was probably defined by the newspaper you read or the radio/TV channels you preferred [see ‘You’re all weird!’ on…

[eannpatterson]

Corona-induced transition from molecular to particle motion in biological media

In last month’s post [see ‘Nanoparticle motion through heterogeneous hydrogels’ on November 6th, 2024], I described our recent work on tracking nanoparticles through a model of the vitreous humour and mentioned it was the first of two articles published in the Nature journal, Scientific Reports.  In the second article, we explored the use of caustics in an optical microscope [see ‘Seeing the…

[eannpatterson]

Nanoparticle motion through heterogeneous hydrogels

Over the last couple of years, we have been transitioning a technique, which we developed for tracking the motion of nanoparticles using caustics [see ‘Slow moving nanoparticles‘ on December 13th 2017], from its initial use in exploring mechanics at the nanoscale to applications in nanobiology [See ‘Label-free real-time tracking of individual bacterium‘ on January 25th, 2023] where it has the…

[eannpatterson]

Emergence of ideas leading to a lack of deep insights

In Surrealism, which emerged after World War 1, artists attempted to allow the subconscious mind to express itself and resulted in illogical montages or dreamlike scenes and ideas.  Some surrealists championed the subconscious because they thought it would release society from the oppressive rationality of capitalism.  Anna Wiele Kjaer of the University of Copenhagen has suggested that instead…

[eannpatterson]

Meaningless on holiday

I spent a substantial proportion of last month enjoying a summer holiday in Cornwall walking sections of the South-west Coast Path (see ‘The Salt Path’ on August 14th, 2019), sampling local beers and reading books.  The books were mainly fiction.  So it should be no surprise that a recurring theme in the books was relationships because no one exists independent of their relationships with…

[eannpatterson]

Imagination is your superpower

About a year ago I wrote an update on the hype around AI [see ‘Update on position of AI on hype curve: it cannot dream’ on July 26th, 2023].  Gartner’s hype curve has a ‘peak of inflated expectations’, followed by a ‘trough of disillusionment’ then an upward ‘slope of enlightenment’ leading to a ‘plateau of productivity’ [see ‘Hype cycle’ on September 23rd 2015].  It is unclear where AI is on the…

[eannpatterson]

Where has the blue planet gone?

They had moved across the galaxy at half the speed of light, covering the 17.6 light-years from their planet in the orbit of Ehseaplus to the Sol system in a couple of hundred days and now they had slowed down their inter-constellation craft to manoeuvre prior to landing on the planet Sol III.  They were looking for a blue planet but they had found two reddish planets orbiting the star, Sol…

[eannpatterson]

Commoditisation of civil nuclear power

A colleague and I published a paper last month that we hope will bring about a paradigm shift in the nuclear power industry. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science on the day following its publication – its the first time one of my scientific papers has made that big a splash in the media!  You can listen to the programme on BBC Sounds at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001zdwv. In…

[eannpatterson]

Extra on digital twins

After five months of posting monthly, I cannot resist the temptation to slip in an extra one.  Mainly because I want to let you know about the Pint of Science Festival taking place next week.  In Liverpool we have organised a series of three evenings at the Philharmonic pub on Hope Street featuring talks by engineers from the School of Engineering and the Institute for Digital Engineering and…

[eannpatterson]

Highest mountain, deepest lake, smallest church and biggest liar

Last month we took a short vacation in the Lake District and stayed in Wasdale whose tag-line is highest mountain, deepest lake.  The mountain is Scafell Pike, the highest mountain in England at 978 m, which we never saw because the clouds never lifted high enough to reveal it.  The lake is Wast Water, the deepest lake in England at 74 m, which rose slowly during our week due to the almost…

[eannpatterson]

More on fairy lights and volume decomposition (with ice cream included)

Last June, I wrote about representing five-dimensional data using a three-dimensional stack of transparent cubes containing fairy lights whose brightness varied with time and also using feature vectors in which the data are compressed into a relatively short string of numbers [see ‘Fairy lights and decomposing multi-dimensional datasets’ on June 14th, 2023].  After many iterations, we have…

[eannpatterson]

Evolutionary model of knowledge management

Towards the end of last year, I wrote about the challenges in deploying digital technologies in holistic approaches to knowledge management in order to gain organizational value and competitive advantage [see ‘Opportunities lost in knowledge management using digital technology’ on October 25th, 2023].  Almost on the last working day of 2023, we had an article published in PLOS ONE (my first in…

[eannpatterson]

Sleeping on the job

At the end of 2023, following my visit to IBM [see ‘Chirping while calculating probabilities‘ on November 22nd, 2023], I spent a significant amount of time trying to understand quantum computing and exploring its potential applications in my research.  It was really challenging because, as one article I read stated, quantum-mechanical phenomena appear to be weird and the mathematical tools used…