The Role of the Engineer in Dispute Avoidance

A few weeks ago, I decided that, instead of Zumba, I would hop on a train to Maidenhead for a talk being given by the Chartered Institute of Arbitrator (the invite had been sent through the IChemE Thames Valley group email).

I managed to come back with three important lessons, which could be applied anywhere in life.

There was a bit of a “Am I in the right place?” moment when I first entered the room. Not so much that there were only two other females in the room of forty or that the average age was around 50. No, everyone was wearing suits which I can’t really wear due to a variety of reasons, top two of which are that they aren’t suited to town/country cycling and that you will be mocked for being too dressed up where my research is taking place. So black jeans, flat shoes, and a fancy pink top in a sea of black suits for me.

I’d encountered the term ‘arbitrator’ before during management and enterprise modules back up in Newcastle. It’s an interesting idea, a neutral third party who basically plays the peacemaker. But like any idea that’s simple on paper, the reality isn’t.

The least concerning of the issues around the engineer in dispute avoidance is the large number of definitions different sectors use. First is that the ‘engineer’ is not always called an engineer nor does it seem he has to be an actual engineer. He may be called a ‘project manager’ or any number of other terms, but the general role is the same.

Lesson 1. Make sure everyone is using the same definition.

The next concern is exactly how neutral can that third party be? After all, someone had to hire him, and according to the talk given, the purchaser can pick their own in most circumstances. However the engineer must always act as neutral as possible, including full disclosure of relevant matters. I could see this leading to several quandaries: first not wanting to get fired by your company while attempting to meet proper neutrality, second not wanting to fail at being neutral.

I asked about how an engineer finding himself having to disclose trade secrets or confidential information relevant to the dispute might handle the situation. If I have the response correct, it is possible to extricate oneself citing conflict of interest. Unfortunately I was able to get clarification if there might be legal ramifications if one were to do so.

Lesson 2. Know what you’re getting into.

Legal power ties back into Lesson 1, as the legal authority of the engineer when acting as a third party is a bit iffy. When acting as a mediator, there doesn’t seem to be any binding legal contract based on the engineer’s final judgement. But in other situations, the engineer’s judgement must be complied with within a given time.

Lesson 3. Be aware of the full extent of your power.

I found the evening quite enjoyable. I hadn’t realised a full institute existed for arbitrators complete with accreditation and training. It’s a pleasant surprise as it’s one of those areas I would like to receive formal training in. Mediation training would probably be more useful in day to day life, so that would come first. Let’s be honest, it would be as much to help me learn to control my temper as to get others to control theirs.

The Ultimate Scientific Solution

Reverse the polarity of the neutrino flow, realigning the dilithium crystals, and so unsticking the quark gluons from the Higgs Boson.

If that doesn’t work, nothing will.

Academic Paper Review: Shadowy vision

Alongside this blog, I write for a few online magazines (and one printed magazine too!). While I pull together the next few updates–well, more pull them apart to spare you my rants–I thought I’d pop a link in to one of the pieces I’d written about another paper, which fits quite nicely with the idea of knowing your references as more than a name.

No, no war crimes or tales of terror. Instead there is political intrigue, power plays, and good humoured jests between world-renowned mathematicians.

I also enjoy the idea of academic papers being written with a narrative structure, at least when concerned with the history of fields. By narrative, I mean beyond “In year X, Y-ene was discovered.”

If you know any good papers to review, either because they are actually good or they’re so bad they make for great review fodder, drop a link in the comments.

In the meantime, here’s a quick taste from my review of

Shadowy vision: spanners in the mechanization of mathematics

[A]s far back as 1623, there are records looking at the mechanization of mathematics. That first known record concerns the work of a Wilhelm Schickard, an Oriental languages professor at the University of Tubingen. It turns out Schickard was a friend of Johannes Kepler (yes, that Kepler). While some may be happy to simply point out the connection, the paper’s authors bring up the personal communications between the two, one of which – contrary to our preconceptions that scholars of the time were incredibly serious and reserved – opens with the words (allowing for translation) “[…] you would laugh loudly if you could see in person […]”.

Reference: Belanger, J., Stein, D., “Shadowy vision: spanners in the mechanization of mathematics”, Historia Mathematica 32 (2005) 76-93.

Forgotten Authors 2

A Grim Unfairytale

Yoshimura attended Kyoto Imperial University in the 1930s. He continued his studies in physiology up until 1938. After Yoshimura completed his book, A Theory and Measurement of pH, he  joined Unit 731 in Manchuria, northern China as an Army Engineer.

I’d heard these terms before from rather different sources. The Manchurian War plays a fairly large part in one of my favourite books, Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Unit 731 I first heard of from my rather eccentric friend, the type of guy who can hold forth on all the controversial films. Literally any genre was fair game, from Cannibal Holocaust to Audition to Aronofsky’s beautiful yet terrible Requiem for a Dream. This friend had told me about a series of movies based on the activities of Unit 731, the Japan’s WWII biological warfare army unit. This was the division responsible for dropping plague-infected fleas on Changde in 1941, one of the many activities cited against six Unit 731 members at the 1949 Khabarovsk War Crime Trials.

Without going into too many of the depressing details, Yoshimura conducted experiments investigating the effects of cold temperature (0°C to -48°C) on living tissue using Chinese prisoners. Any prisoner could be used, with one source, The Oxford Textbook of Clinical Research Ethics, noting the use of a three day old baby. Visitors to the facility—specially constructed to allow year-round research—were shown men missing the flesh from their fingers, the bones still in place.

Shifting the Blame?

The work that started me on this story was piece by Takashi Tsuchiya comparing the wartime activities and post-war actions of Yoshimura with those of Dr. Ken Yuasa. Yuasa was an army surgeon, ordered to carry out live vivisections. He spent the rest of his life after the war expressing remorse that he didn’t go against those orders. Yoshimura was a civilian researcher attached to Unit 731, but never actually part of the army. He has denied any responsibility for his actions, and returned to Japan as part of a war crime amnesty the American government struck with members of Unit 731 in return for information.

Yet according to Tsuchiya,  as a civilian Yoshimura was free to refuse the requests from department head, Michinosuke Shoji, forceful as they might be. The worst that could happen was that Yoshimura would be forced to leave the department, academically side-lined.

The work Yoshimura did prior to WWII is technically blemish free, the only tarnish coming from his later actions and denial of responsibility for those actions. The frost-bite experiments however are a very different story. Three papers based on the experiments were published in English-language Japanese Journal of Physiology between 1950 and 1952 and have garnered over 150 citations according to Google Scholar. The number of actual citations is likely much higher. As for the number of papers using Yoshimura’s research without a direct citation? We can only guess.

The Quandry

There’s a horrible balance between two facts:

1. His experiments were a monstrous affront to humanity.
2. Yoshimura’s experiments taught the world how extreme cold effects living tissue.

Which is worse, ethically: to take that knowledge knowing its disgraceful origins or to ignore the findings, call all that torture and death an “unfortunate event” and sweep it under the rug? Or, worse still, to take the learnings while refusing to acknowledge the origins. Ignorance is bliss after all…

Yoshimura is just one example, although an extreme one. There’s no way to resolve the ethical issues of past discoveries. All we can do is make sure our future discoveries are morally and ethically sound, something that won’t happen if we ignore the monsters hidden in the references.

Scientific efforts should always be for the betterment of humanity, never at the expense of it.

Forgotten Authors Part 1

Down The Rabbit Hole

It’s a strange world we live in. We have easy access to millions of academic papers, able to call up PDFs of papers published in the 19th century with a simple click. It’s led to the needle in a haystack issue I mentioned previously, but there’s another sad side-effect: how often do you think about the person who wrote the paper? There’s a danger of mindless consumption of academic papers without even the courtesy of knowing a little about the person who wrote it. Sure, there are some superstars out there, for example George Stephanopoulos who appears on every paper on signals ever* (and who will be appearing at WCCE9).

We can’t all be superstars, yet it is easier than ever to find out about the person who wrote your next reference with university profiles, personal websites, and the professional’s Facebook, LinkedIn. The older the paper, the more difficult the history can be. While some may say that they don’t care if they are remembered so long as their research lives on, the idea of disappearing in such a way is terrifying for others. But every now and then, a bit of reference chasing leads you to information that makes you think that for some people, that’s not a bad idea…

While searching the haystack for studies looking at the effect of temperature on pH, I found a perfect reference. It was study from 1948 looking at the effects of temperature on pH for human blood and human blood plasma (1). It looks like the ’40s was a much kinder time for paper writing as only six references were given, in comparison to the twenty citations in a rough first draft I did that were deemed far too few. Half of the references came from a single source: Hisato Yoshimura.

Yoshimura had carried out several few studies looking at relationships between temperature, pH, and blood samples. For example, one looked into the effects of various anti-coagulants on pH reading (2)—blood starts to coagulate the moment it is shed and hits air. This would cause issues with clogging in needles, but as different substances have different pH/temperature relationships, how much anti-coagulant could be added before having a non-negligible impact?

These studies were fantastic, providing much needed references for fundamental assumptions, even if they were pre-WWII, and they also offered insights to how far pH technology has come—when did you last have to hand-craft bridges for your probes? I was determined to discover whether Yoshimura had carried out any further studies. Amazingly, I found he had written an entire book on pH measurement. Less amazing was discovering the story of the book’s publication and the author’s future work. This is where my previous joy at discovering Yoshimura turned to cringing discomfort.

*Including those from before he was born. Because Stephanopoulos controls time. Maybe.

1. Rosenthal, TB. “The effect of temperature on the pH of blood and plasma in vitro”, Journal of Biological Chemistry (1948) 173 pp. 25-30

2. Yoshimura, H. “EFFECTS OF ANTICOAGULANTS ON THE pH OF THE BLOOD Studies on the blood pH estimated by the glass electrode method. II”, Journal of Biochemistry (1935) 22 (2) pp. 279-295

Needle in a Search Results Haystack

I am currently working on a paper covering my first research EngD project. To be honest, we declared ourselves at an adequate stopping point around June 2011, but writing up is so easy to keep pushing aside (being aware of your flaws is the first step to fixing them).

Today’s task is fitting more references in as I’m well read paper-wise but have a bad habit of not shoving those in.

One thing the work focused on was the effect of temperature on pH. These are fundamental parameters and yet there is precious little on the subject beyond the same basic background information on Galvanic cells and the occasional mention of the Nerst equation.

This is made all the more difficult by the fact that the search term “effects of temperature on pH” returns studies on the effects of temperature and pH on other items. Effectively, every single study done on reactor and reaction optimisation, be it biochemical, chemical, pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, or even medical.

It’s all rather needle in a haystack, despite the mighty power of the internet.

My suggestion? A more scientific combination of search engine and meta-data. There would be a separate field for the experimental variables and another field for the investigate response, information easily added to a document alongside the abstract and keywords.

Simple, isn’t it?

Sure you could get fancy with filters to specify cell lines used or reactor types, but I’d be happy just to get “Scientific Search Engine” 1.0 out there.

(“Scientific Search Engine” is my idea, complete with copyright and all other applicable IP protection. I accept PayPal, major credit/debit cards, and ponies as licensing payment methods.)

“So I’ve Got This Flight Booked…” A WCCE9 Update

In August, the 9th World Congress of Chemical Engineering will be held in Seoul, Korea. I have been counting down to this event since the end of 2011, when the WCCE9 website was still a skeleton.

Portrait of the Blogger as an Abstract Writer

Abstract writing started in January 2012 and was worked on in spare moments. By October 15th, it had been refined, re-refined, through five reviews including an external publication and patent review, and submitted well in time for the Hallowe’en deadline. Now I had only to wait for December 31st and to learn if I would be ringing in the new year with high spirits or drinking away my misery.

Well, that was the plan. But the deadline for abstracts was pushed back until January 31st with abstract acceptance notices going out at the end of February. This means that there is still time for you to submit. I should be encouraging everyone who can to submit, except no. I would rather not have to deal with the extra competition.

No! Bad! Close that Word document! I’ve got my eye on you…

Fly Me To The Moon

One of the reasons I liked the December 31st acceptance notice was that airlines hold sales in January. One of those flights was British Airways’ London Heathrow- Incheon flight, which is both brand new (it opened in December 2012) and direct (tra la!).

Now I have a little second-hand experience with flights to Seoul as my brother has been out there for the past few years. I know the normal price you can expect to pay is uncomfortably close to £1000 and that until recently you could expect to spend at least a few hours in layovers in France or the Netherlands. An almost half-price direct flight from my local aeroport? Perfect.

While I still won’t know if I have been accepted for well over a month, I’ve got my tickets already and two weeks booked off. The way I see it, whether I end up spending part of that time at the COEX at the WCCE9 or if I spend the whole time exploring a new place, it will be my big event of 2013.

(But I would really, really, really prefer that first option, dear WCCE9 abstract reviewer person, sir.)

Hands On Bioprocessing – IChemE Event

Hey guys, I found my write-up for the Hands On Bioprocessing event! For some reason it was in my collection of panda pictures.

Who doesn’t love getting to muck about with new kit? When you get new kitchen knives, you find a way to use every single blade making just a salad. Bioprocessing gear is no different. When you’re shown the latest developments in monitoring, mixing, and media, expect itchy palms. And there must have been plenty last Tuesday at the IChemE “Hands On Bioprocessing” event held at Imperial College London.

Intelligent Sensors

Despite the best efforts of the Circle Line, I was able to see new methods for monitoring pH from intelligent sensors which can telling if they are malfunctioning (Hamilton) to those still in development like the PreSens Vivisens optical DO probe, which is being altered for use in pH and CO2 monitoring.

I won’t deny that part of why the Vivisens DO probe impressed me was simply that fact it was incredibly visual—a sheet of sensing material on the inside of a vessel is used to convert DO readings across an area into a 2D heat-map when the optical probe (essentially a special camera) is applied. This was used to show the oxygen distribution around a living cell. By capturing multiple images to create a video clip, we were able to watch the cell ‘breathe’.

The ViviSens is still an emerging technology and very unique. The company, PreSens, is actually doing quite a clever thing to get the news out there. The company is open to proposals where they will lend researchers the equipment for two months on the condition the researchers put together a short video of the work. There are videos available showing leaves coated in hydrogels respiring, which are interesting to watch (I would love to see if leaves in urban environments breathe differently compared to those in conservation areas), but one thing I would love to see it pH mixing patterns in miniature bioreactors, which this technology is perfect for. So when you do get the pH version out, PreSens, expect to hear from me…

Shaken, Not Stirred

My second big wow was the Resonant Acoustic Mixing (RAM) machine by Applikon. Again, very visual but also it appealed to my nostalgia. RAM is largely about oscillation and I got my start in research looking at oscillation in continuous oscillated baffle reactors (COBR)*.

So what’s RAM mixing? Well, it begins with a funny hat for your conical flask. This hat is a bit like an accordion with a filter on top. When the flask is moved up and down on a plate, this hat compresses and expands. This draws air from the environment in through the filter into the flask then expels it form the flask headspace, allowing fresh air to enter the system. Meanwhile the liquid in the flask is thoroughly mixed up and down, not in the vortex pattern you get with swirling. A bit odd to explain in words but here’s a video of it in action.

While they do look a bit like the dancing mushrooms in Fantasia, they got me thinking about what you could outside of microbial expansion. Could this be a good way to do some washing up? More seriously, could this technology be used to scale down COBR to a single cell? While we look at how efficient reactors are, COBR are a series of miniature plug-flow reactors. If we can characterise a single cell, technically we could specify required reactor sizes in terms of how many cells are required. Comparisons of the effects of baffle sizing, reactor diameter, and use of aeration could all be studied in depth.

Although I do believe ‘funny, functional chef hats for conical flasks’ should be all the detail you need to say “Yes. Where do I sign?”

*Extra bonus trivia: the name of the lab was COBR Applications or COBRA for short. Take that, G.I. Joe.

Heading off to “Hands on Bioprocessing”

In a wee while I will be running off to catch the train to London. Why London? Planning to skive off for the day, am I? Nope, I’m heading to “Hands on Bioprocessing” at Imperial College London!

While there will be a blog post after the fact, I plan to get some tweets up. So keep an eye for them at @magpie882

In other news, the world is very dark at 6.30AM.

From the Archives: Going into Third Gear

This is an update I wrote back on 13 Aug 2012 and forgot to upload. The benefit is that I can give you some outcomes from it already.

Assuming the viva goes well, I will be a big bad third in a few weeks’ time. Yes, my cohort are nearly at the halfway point already! And as third years, we won’t be able to go on start of the year EngD trip as it’s reserved for first and second years. Instead we have lots of planning to look forward to.

Of course there’s writing up the thesis which is pretty scary. Then there’s getting some incidental things written up for company use plus trying to get an article on my pH work published.

Speaking of publishing, a new publication is starting up at Newcastle to cover science and engineering on a not-scary-equations-and-jargon level to help kick off the run up to the British Science Festival 2013. It’s called REACT; you can find us online here (site still under construction!) and follow us on twitter @react_magazine.

And then there are the big events: conferences. While I’m sure we’re all preparing for the Newcastle EngD Conference 2013 in June, I’ve got my eye on a slightly bigger fish. (Think Megashark big).

I’m hoping to apply to and be accepted by the 9th World Congress of Chemical Engineering, which will be held in Seoul, South Koirea on August 18 to 23^rd, 2013. It’s a big event, and I plan to submit my abstract under the “Industry and Academic Co-operation” subject group. It’d be one hell of a way to finish up third year. If I am accepted, I’ve got a solid year of preparing, stressing, and excitement ahead of me on top of everything else.

I’ll you what. Third year’s already got me exhausted. =/

Outcomes so far:

1. Got to go along on this year’s trip anyway! Girls dominated guys in kayak polo along the lines of 7:2.
2. Successfully passed Viva.
3. Abstract under final legal review for external publication.