{"id":1502,"date":"2014-12-30T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2014-12-30T03:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/?p=1502"},"modified":"2014-12-29T12:39:28","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T03:39:28","slug":"it-was-the-year-that-was-2014-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1502","title":{"rendered":"It was the year that was (2014 edition)."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recap time! As the years before, 2014 has been a good year for LaN and me. As you know, this year I moved from a twice monthly post to a mostly weekly post, making this the 56th post this year (if my count is correct). Let&#8217;s take a look at some of them. <!--more--><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1507\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1507\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/mc2014.h004.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1507 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/mc2014.h004-300x220.png\" alt=\"mc2014.h004\" width=\"300\" height=\"220\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/mc2014.h004-300x220.png 300w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/mc2014.h004-150x110.png 150w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/mc2014.h004.png 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1507\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><\/pre>\n<pre>Bikes in Tokyo<\/pre>\n<p><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3>Attention grabbers:<\/h3>\n<p>Records were broken this year by a few posts in succession. Here is the top three:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1415\">third most-read article <\/a>concerns the vast amount of papers that resulted from measurement artifacts. <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.0108482\">A critical view<\/a> was published recently after a prolonged battle, one we hope may prevent more time and money being wasted chasing ghosts.<\/li>\n<li>Just edging out that post is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/991\">the article<\/a> announcing the new Live Fourier Transform program. This code has been very successful in presentations to explain some of the concepts behind scattering.<\/li>\n<li>Coming in in first place, partly due to Twitter mentions by Stephen Curry and others, is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1457\">the exploration of the Dark Side of Science<\/a>. This seemed to resonate with many people, although it is not quite on topic for LaN. Fear not, articles like that one will be the exception.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Guest posts:<\/h4>\n<p>We had three well-read guest posts this year (and aiming for more next year*). In order of appearance:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1089\">Gr\u00e9gory Stoclet<\/a> talked about his use of SAXS to study crazing phenomena in polymers.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1205\">Jan Ilavsky<\/a> introduced his Ultra-SAXS machine and his SAXS software efforts, and highlighted that it is now very user-friendly! As an occasional instrument builder, I know how tough it can be to get to that stage.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1494\">Marcus Gallagher-Jones<\/a> talked about his work on coherent diffraction imaging, for which he used a SAXS-like set-up at the <a href=\"http:\/\/xfel.riken.jp\/eng\/index.html\">SACLA<\/a> X-ray laser.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Personal Favourites:<\/h4>\n<p>My own favourites of the year (though the choice is hard) involve quick studies with surprising conclusions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In third place, I have enjoyed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1241\">looking at dense systems,<\/a> and finding out that even with a rather crude approximation we can still fit dense systems (if you do not mind some spurious features). This post highlighted that you a perfect fit can be obtained for this data for a range of volume fractions, but that the shape of the distribution is dependent on the volume fraction chosen.<\/li>\n<li>In second place, a decent shot at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1274\">background subtraction mathematics<\/a> revealed that even when you want to do proper background subtraction for samples in capillaries, you can end up with a straightforward background subtraction equation! It is a good textbook exercise too, for those looking for educational material.<\/li>\n<li>In first place, I am very happy to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1309\">have discovered<\/a> that a 10-minute measurement on a Kratky or line-collimated instrument does not give you better results than a 10-minute measurement on a pinhole-collimated instrument. The benefits of the high intensity of the line-collimated system is counterbalanced by the error magnification induced by the desmearing method.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Publishing and Perishing:<\/h4>\n<p>There have been some blog posts highlighting every publication that has come out this year. Some of which have a longer road ahead (submitted, not accepted), and a few others that were published in their final form.<\/p>\n<p>The finalized ones are (in order of appearance): <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/970\">TEM &amp; SAXS on MgZn<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1228\">Martin&#8217;s Molecules<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1415\">Anti-stripy Nanoparticles<\/a>. The not-so-finalized ones are: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1384\">More TEM &amp; SAXS<\/a>, and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1499\">remake of McSAS<\/a>. Lastly, there is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1408\">living &#8220;Everything SAXS&#8221;-book<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h4>And many, many more:<\/h4>\n<p>Looking back at the year, there have been a great many posts that I (and hopefully you too) liked. Maintaining the site is taking up a bit of time every week, but the feedback has been very good and positive. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/drheaddamage\">YouTube channel<\/a> attracts a steady stream of views as well, hopefully adding another dimension to the topic.<\/p>\n<p>These posts have not been possible without the discussions and collaborations with many colleagues. My sincere thanks to all those setting off wonderful e-mail discussions, all those letting me talk at their institutes, and all those doing amazing and fascinating research that makes a small scatterer&#8217;s life so exciting.<\/p>\n<p>Next week, I hope to talk about what is in store for the coming year. Until then, there is but one more post I wish to highlight, which is one of the posts that started me thinking about the essence of science: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1262\">Lessons from history<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>*) Let me know if you are interested!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Recap time! As the years before, 2014 has been a good year for LaN and me. As you know, this year I moved from a <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/1502\" title=\"It was the year that was (2014 edition).\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/mc2014.h004.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gZ2v-oe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1502"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1509,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502\/revisions\/1509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}