Joshua D. Krabbe¹, David R. Roberts².

1. MSc. Specialization in fabrication of tiny thingamabobs and thingamajigs and doodads and doohickeys that aren’t immediately very useful for anything*
2. PhD Candidate. Specialization in sweeping inconsistencies in climate data under the rug

Hypothesis: An investigation of the following trends may yield evidence of the evolutionary eating strategy homo-sapiens might be best served to adopt to coexist with their environment.

Correlation of these trends was calculated based on the month by month data for global climate and annual obesity rates data across the United States of America. A correlation coefficient of 0.354 was determined, which indicates a statistically significant correlation and a probability of error of only 0.502%.

Conclusions: the obvious inference to be made based on this data is that it is an instinctive reaction of the human race to get fatter as global temperatures rise. While the actions of the collective human race have caused an increase in carbon dioxide emissions by burning fossil fuels and cutting down large portions of what was permanent forest, the individual members of the species should demonstrate instinctive behaviour to enhance their chances of survival and hence increase their opportunities to mate and reproduce. The basic tenets of the theory of natural selection of the species imply that the instinctive behaviour of humans when faced with a changing environment is typically the one most well suited to their survival in the long term. The correlation shown above demonstrates that with high confidence (p < 0.006) that the instinctive response shown by human beings when exposed to changing climate is to increase the adipose tissue content of their bodies. The logical explanation for this behaviour is simply that carbon capture and storage, is the method of climate change mitigation naturally selected for by evolution. Future biomimetic applications based on this research may find pertinence throughout the energy industry and may be used to bolster the mean self esteem of the nation.

*This should be noted as further evidence that the behavioural strategies of individual specimens of a species do not always align with the interests of their species. The misalignment in interests and causation, or lack thereof, of this effect remains an active area of research.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything about my research here on this blog. Sure, I guess I’ve written about my research in exercise physiology a bit but I don’t think that really counts. Ever since I submitted my paper on 1D photonic crystal switching based on dye electrophoretic movement to Applied Physics Letters this past spring I’ve been working on building a 3D photonic crystal. So, that’s a lot of months! There’s recently been some good progress and I had some good success this past week. I’m not going to delve into the details because I’m essentially certain that of all the people who read this page aren’t checking up on the latest in photonic crystal research! I mention it so infrequently. But, a photonic crystal is a pretty beautiful thing on the macro-scale as well as on the nanoscale so I figured I’d post some pictures.

I guess all that’s clear is that the colour changes, which is indication that I at least did something right. The quantitative measurement of the optical properties however yields better indication that a bandgap exists, rather than just basing speculation on the presence of some shimmery looking stuff. A bandgap appears as a “bump” in a reflection spectrum and a “dip” in a transmission spectrum. The reflectance spectrum is shown here:

The nanostructure of the photonic crystal is created by seeding a surface with nucleation points and then depositing a structured thin film based on a 3D lattice structure which has a B-Zone that creates a complete bandgap. An example of how the seeding works is shown at left and then two images of a structured photonic crystal thin film are shown at right. (click the images to see them larger)

My paper was published in Applied Physics Letters on August 2, 2010.

Reflectivity of a photonic crystal device fabricated by glancing angle deposition may be reversibly
altered by infiltration with an absorbing dye solution. An electric field controls the dye ion motion
through the photonic crystal. Rapid reflectance changes up to 0.4 in the crystal’s optical band gap
are demonstrated. The time evolution of the dye movement process is examined and its operation
described. This work may have applications for a passive optical display. © 2010 American Institute
of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3473827

The figures follow:

FIG. 1. (a) Bragg stack photonic crystal microstructure fabricated using GLAD. (b) Schematic representation of assembled cell, not to scale. Reflectance is measured from the top surface.

FIG. 2. (a) Reflectance ranges achieved when driving the cell with 800 mV. Negative polarity yields a reflectance minimum, whereas positive polarity drives dye out of the crystal for a reflectance maximum. (b) Maximal reflectance variation (λ = 715 nm) driven at three voltages. Same reflectance scale as left.

FIG. 3. (a) A reflectance time response of the cell at 715 nm when addressed with a driving voltage of 1000 mV. (b) The calculated characteristic time constants of the optical response. Driving voltages of 600 mV, 800 mV, and 1000 mV are shown in light, medium, and dark gray, respectively. Gray borders indicate wavelengths where rise or fall behavior resembled a clipped exponential.

If you’re interested in a copy of the .pdf of this paper and cannot download it from the internet you’re welcome to contact me and I will pass it along via email.

I spent a while punching author names from Photonics West 2010 into google today. I soon realized that I was likely not alone in this pursuit and would be well advised to update this website to be relevant to the new potential visitors here over the course of the next week.

If you are in San Francisco, and attending the conference, and have found this page, I’d like to invite you to attend my talk on Thursday at 11:20 in room 234 (Mezzanine). My talk is entitled “Photonic Crystal Switching by the electrophoretic movement of dye ions” and is part of the session on “Novel effects and Applications in Photonic Crystal Structures” within the “Photonic and Phononic Crystal Materials and Devices IX“. Relevant information is on pages 238-240 of the Technical Program.

Now that I’ve located all this spatially, temporally, and categorically I’d probably be wise to briefly outline the paper:

ABSTRACT: Glancing angle deposition (GLAD) facilitates the fabrication of nanostructured thin films with varying density, using a motion control algorithm governing substrate movements during film growth, which engineerings the film structure. Film architectures for specific optical applications including photonic crystals are easily produced with GLAD. A challenge in the photonic crystal field has been the realization of in-situ control of optical characteristics. We have demonstrated partial control of stopband optical characteristics using an electric field in a GLAD 1D photonic crystal by the electrophoretic movement of absorbing dye ions.

Authors: Joshua D. Krabbe, Univ. of Alberta (Canada); Michael J. Brett, Univ. of Alberta (Canada) and National Institute for Nanotechnology (Canada)

With a bit more elaboration:

The basic premise of this work is that the movement of absorbing dye ions into and out of a porous photonic crystal yields a means by which the optical properties of the stopband of the photonic crystal may be modified. The device structure (shown below) is probed for reflectance optical properties from the top surface within the operating region (delimited by dashed lines). The photonic crystal is deposited on a transparent conducting oxide film and when the sandwich structure is completed with an identical counter electrode the device becomes electrically addressable. A dissociating dye (Methylene Blue) is used and when a positive voltage (top with respect to bottom) is applied the cations of the dye (absorbing species) are driven out of the photonic crystal. Reversal of the voltage attracts these cations and absorbing dye species accumulate in the photonic crystal.

Note: this image is (very!) not to scale.

As you likely have already anticipated, the presence of absorbing species within the photonic crystal has an inhibiting effect on the reflectance. Changing the dye concentration affects the probability of photon-dye interaction. The response of reflectance properties with addressing voltage, and an examination of the time response of optical properties to electrical switching of the device will be presented; along with an elaboration of the GLAD technique used to fabricate the porous photonic crystal that forms the basis of the device.

If you can’t attend, the proceedings will be published in 2-4 weeks.

If you’re going to catch this pandemic influenza strain you might be interested to know what you’re getting yourself into before-hand. I wouldn’t recommend catching it, but if you do decide that you’re going to get sick and are wondering what it’s going to be like and how long it’s going to take before you’re healthy then take a read.

Day 1:I wake up with an irritated throat. I think that it’s probably due to the fact that our house smells like liquor after my room-mates had a big birthday party here last night and there are in excess of one hundred empty bottles on the dining room table evaporating a disgusting concoction of booze-smells into the air. I have no other indication that I’m not feeling well until about 11am when I start to feel achy in my lower back and am feeling kind-of chilly. I presume being cold is due to having every window in the house open to let the booze-smell out and the aching muscles due to a hard-fought race the day before. I head off to the race today and decide to line up and give it a shot even though I’m not feeling 100%. I feel strong off the start and ride very well for the first lap, I’m sticking with the lead group, but about 10 minutes in I feel like I’m breathing pretty hard considering my actual effort level. My pace doesn’t fall off until the third lap when I feel like I can’t breathe in deep enough to keep racing. I back it off to a JRA pace but I am not catching my breath. I decide I need to stop or I’m going to be in serious trouble, riding off the trail into the woods is the image playing itself out in my head. I know I’m going to get lapped out of the race anyways, not finishing vs not getting a time seems irrelevant at the moment. Once I stop completely it hardly takes any time and I can breathe again, I change and spectate the rest of the race with a down jacket on and feeling rather comfortable. I think I might be catching a cold so pick up some COLD-FX and DayQuil on the way home, I dose up on DayQuil and feel just fine for the rest of the day.

Day 2: I wake up feeling rather miserable and chug back some more DayQuil, pop some Ibuprofen, some Cold-FX, a couple Vitamin-C tablets, a multi-vitamin and some B-12 (this is not for the cold – I’ll write about this eventually). I’m pretty shivery and my face is hot, that gets a lazy student diagnosis as a fever even though I have no thermometer. I don’t feel like eating much – so I don’t. My achy lower back now includes knees, piriformis, triceps, pectorals and a mild headache. Those are all of the muscles or joints I’ve stressed during the last week of workouts… I’m not terribly surprised that the parts of my body with tissue rebuilding are going to be hot-spots for influenza aches. I feel a lot better within about half an hour of my vitamin binge but still deem myself diagnosed when that irritated throat from yesterday morning starts to become a cough. Diagnostic criteria are as follows:

• Aute onset of new cough or change in existing cough, plus one or more of the following:
• fever (> 38C on arrival or by history)
• sore throat
• joint pain
• muscle aches
• severe exhaustion

By 4 pm I’m ready for bed, that finishes my tally for racking up all of the criteria for having H1N1 (while not necessarily severe exhaustion it is certainly exhaustion) and being satisfied with a fantastic diagnosis I go to sleep. Total caloric intake for the day is below a thousand calories. I don’t think I’ve done that in a decade! I wake up at 10pm and stay awake for an hour before getting some NyQuil in me and heading back off to sleep.

Day 3:I strategically wake up at 7am to down my morning dose of DayQuil, Ibuprofen, Cold-FX and Vitamin-C before heading back to sleep for an hour. I wake up after the effects of the drugs are in full swing and I feel pretty good. My voice has deteriorated to the point that I occasionally sound like a braking train (Example soundtrack). The aches are a tad less but my nose has started to run a bit more and I can tell I’m totally dehydrated. I have been sweating like crazy and the hoodie I slept in is kind-of damp. I last until 6pm and then take a snooze for a couple hours. I set an alarm to wake up again to re-dose on NyQuil for some drug induced ZZZzzzz’s which should guarantee me to sleep through the night. Total calories is less than 600 – new record – and half of that is from a slice of chocolate cake – totally nutritious.

Day 4:I do the early wakeup to get drugs in my system before having to get out of bed, unfortunately I’m probably starting to get over this flu as I’m not so totally tired that I can immediately fall back asleep for the next hour. So be it, and I resign to laying and shivering in my somewhat damp clothes. I do what every serious triathlete does when lying around in bed in the morning, I take my pulse, and then I do what every engineer-triathlete does, do it five times to try and get a measure of the accuracy. The results are not to my pleasing: 75-80 bpm, resting with legs slightly elevated. That’s about 40 bpm higher than it should be – definitely still sick. The aches have left my legs but my back is quite sore today. Total calories for the day are around 1000 as I noticed that my pants are really loose and that I’m rapidly loosing weight, I need to get some food in regardless of my desire to do so.

Day 5:Waking up early to drug myself into an acceptable state to get out of bed has become routine. I repeat the method again, it seems to work. Today the fever is gone but I still occasionally find myself with the chills. I feel like I’ve developed more of a head-cold than a full body flu as I’m rather blocked up in my sinuses. Basically no appetite but eat regardless. I weigh in at 11 pounds less than I did last Friday today, that’s weight loss that rivals what those chumps are doing on “The Biggest Loser”. Not good news – bad enough news that I’m not even going to bother trying to race at Provincials in a week, I’m too wrecked from this to recover back to race-shape within a week and I know it. I’ve got my fingers crossed that I could go for an easy swim on the weekend.

Day 6:I wake-up and deem myself no longer sick. I’m a far cry from healthy, but I wouldn’t even call this a bad cold any-more, just a cough and runny nose, I’m like a walking talking model of health with a few ribs showing. Oh, and the fact that it was 1pm before I realized I should eat something. I’ve still not been hungry yet since this started although last night after my weigh-scale nightmare I cooked up a serious meal and ate lots of it. No sensation of hunger when I started eating or sensation of satiation when I finished. Hopefully that aspect of normality returns or I fear I’ll keep rapidly cutting weight.

So I’m stuck in the lab at 8:30 pm on a Monday night. It’s not like I could be swimming anyways due to the roadrash on my hand so it’s not the end of the world… But I decided to film a bit of a video of the process I’m working with right now. Captions on the video itself tall what the different controls are… so there’s no description here.

I admit I crammed a lot of annotations on the tiny little video but that’s what the pause button is for I guess. Or the replay button if you’re interested. Or the back-button on your browser after you realized what this actually was a video of.

September 21, 2007 – Edmonton — (borrowed or stolen from the UofA Expressnews

Soft-spoken, unassuming, and a little uncomfortable in the spotlight, Michael Brett doesn’t come across as someone who’s launched countless engineering careers and a world-class research facility.

But he has done that and more. His work as a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta is just the foundation of an energetic career that shows no sign of slowing, even after 22 years.

Brett was honoured today as the U of A celebrated its 12^th anniversary of teaching and learning excellence Sept. 21.

The celebration, held at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium and led by U of A President Indira Samarasekera, recognized the high standard reached by the university’s faculty and students. Brett was awarded the University Cup for a dynamic career of excellence in teaching and research.

“We are absolutely delighted to award professor Brett the University Cup,” said Samarasekera. “Professor Brett has had a most prolific academic career and his discoveries have made a tremendous impact upon a variety of industry sectors. He is internationally known for his work in electrical and computer engineering and is currently at the forefront of breakthrough research in nanotechnology. The U of A is extremely proud of professor Brett and we feel honoured to celebrate his numerous achievements.”

Brett’s work with thin-film engineering has been recognized around the globe in the form of numerous research titles, publications in 200 scientific journals, creative collaborations with multinational corporations, and a software system that was successfully commercialized and sold to major players such as IBM, Intel and Toshiba.

Despite a towering list of achievements, Brett uses the word ’serendipity’ when describing the start of his career at the U of A.

“I came along at the right time,” he said.

As a newly-minted professor, Brett worked tirelessly to help pioneer the Micromachining and Nanofabrication Facility, an entity that was instrumental in having the cutting-edge National Research Council’s National Institute for Nanotechnology’s constructed on campus. Today Bret is a Senior Research Officer at NINT, a facility that shines in the U of A’s research crown.

“The Nanofab is the core facility that seeded the incredibly high level of materials and nanotechnology research now ongoing at the University of Alberta,” said David Lynch, dean of the Faculty of Engineering. “Professor Brett has made enormous contributions to research, service and teaching.”

Brett’s other titles include an iCORE professorship in Nanoengineered ICT Devices, holder of the Micralyne/NSERC/iCORE Senior Industrial Chair in Thin Film Engineering and the Canada Research Chair in Nanoengineered Thin Films.

Brett’s success also translates to the classroom where, as an enthusiastic director of engineering physics, he transformed the program from a group of 10 students to one with an enrolment that has exceeded 30, with many applicants turned away in some years. Brett has helped his students realize their dreams by lending an ear to those who have come to his door seeking career advice. By helping them focus their choices with questions as simple as where they’d like to live, Brett has steered students to rewarding worldwide posts as university academics, with NASA, Intel and here at home, with research centres like the Cross Cancer Institute.

Brett believes his job doesn’t end when a degree is awarded.

“We should care about students and their careers,” he said. And students, in turn, care about Brett. His computer is filled with ‘where are they now’ photos from grateful grads, and he has received the highest possible rating on teaching evaluations from almost every student, in classes of up to 132 people.

But when asked about his secret to meaningful teaching, Brett deflects the glory onto his students, who are already top-notch, in his view.

“I just go there and deliver the goods. I have a very talented group.”

Brett’s deep respect and patience for his students plays a large part in that success, said Andy van Popta, who has spent eight years as an undergrad and graduate student in Brett’s lab.

“He always keeps the student’s best interests in mind. He makes sure they get to conferences, helps them focus thesis work, creates worthwhile lab projects and provides as much or as little leadership as a person needs.”

Brett has a gift for making each student feel special. In this case, Brett met van Popta’s parents, gave van Popta’s younger brother some work experience in the lab, even attended van Popta’s wedding.

“He knows my whole family.”

It instills self-confidence and the idea that any goal is reachable, van Popta said

“I can only imagine if the supervisor never showed interest in anyone as an individual – it would be hard to deal with.”

Looking to the future, Brett still has a dream of his own – to reward his many research funders by creating a product that is a commercial hit within Alberta. “There’s been a lot invested in my work, and I want to pay back some of that investment.”

It could be in the form of just about anything in a lab that has no boundaries.

As for being awarded the University Cup, Brett is honoured. “I like to think of the University Cup as recognition for the great students that I have been associated with.”

Here’s the abstract for the latest paper…

Electric Field Properties of Asymmetric Capacitances

Properties of the electric field produced between two parallel charged conducting wires are described and analyzed. A DC high voltage supply is used to charge a capacitive configuration of narrow gauge wire which produces a strong electric field. An electrostatic model of the apparatus is developed and used to describe the observed phenomenon of ionization of atmospheric gasses in this electric field. Measurement of the forces caused by the acceleration of these ions provided a means of ascertaining an approximate threshold for the electric field to cause ionization of atmospheric gasses of 2.8 ± 0.4 MV·m−1 in excellent agreement with the accepted value of 3 MV·m−1. Forces on the order of tens of milliNewtons are observed, sufficient to support the entire weight of the apparatus generating the field.

For my final Physics 397 lab I’m working with Andrew Burke and Steve Jim, we’re studying propulsion. The idea is that we ionize air in the presence of a strong electric field, accelerate the electrons in one direction and the cations in the other direction. As a result in the mass difference (more than 10000:1 for atmospheric gasses) There is thrust generated according to Newton’s third law.

The magnitude of the propulsion force depends on how much air is being ionized and the electric field that it is going to be accelerated across (remember that the mean free path in air (SATP) is on the order of microns, not meters). Generating an electric field strong enough to strip electrons from air molecules isn’t all that simple when you imagine how strong it needs to be, but there is a relatively simply way of doing it. A very simple application of Gauss’s Law to an infinite line charge shows that the field goes like (lambda)/(2*pi*eo*r) where lambda is the linear charge density eo is the permittivity of free space, and r is the distance from the axis of the line charge. That means that the electric field gets arbitrarily large as you approach a theoretical line charge.

To charge a very thin wire (good approx of line charge) we just need to include it in a capacitor and put a large voltage across it. We’re just suspending the thin wire (42 gauge magnet wire) above a large radius of curvature conductor (piece of Al foil).

To measure the force generated (as the obvious manifestation of the phenomenon) we’re suspending the apparatus on a pendulum and measuring the angle of deflection from vertical.

Prelimiary tests have shown that we’re not completely out to lunch, we’re deflecting our “flyer” by close to 10⁰ with a mass of many tens of grams if not hundred (haven’t yet measured).

I’ve been sitting in an ETLC computer lab for quite a few hours here trying to write a computer simulation of the phys 397 lab that Rob Joseph and I have been working on for the last month. What should have ended up being a “straight line” passing through a nice series of 60 data points is actually a straight line passing through a jungle of randonimity. What I believe turned out to be our problem was that when we approximated our “filter function” (the transmission spectrum of the IR filters being used) we just used e as the base of the exponent. Assuming that a bell curve is accurately described by a gaussian distribution is something that loads of people probably do every day. I mean we did it every day for a month in Statistical Mechanics when we use the Stirlings approximation of large factorials. There are situations, and unfortunately our lab turns out to be one of them where a Gaussian just doesn’t describe a bell curve very well at all.

Indeed it’s the difference between something being gaussian and something being a bit wider up top or more triangular that throws our data for a loop. When performing the numerical integration right near the peak of the blackbody curve the filter is much narrower than the peak of the spectrum. This means that the variation from one filter to another across this regions is not
extremly pronounced. When the filter funtion is poorly approximated it makes a big difference!

What really needs to be done is to replicate the bell curve of the filter using a numerically exact model. Since I don’t have any means to do this I’m going to have to switch my beautiful 60 data point set into 10 data sets (ten filters) with only 6 data points each.

I was also going to pursue a reverse derivation of the plank curve using a 3D curve fit of my data array, that would have made my lab something close to a manifestation of sheer beauty on paper. But with these results I think it’s not going to be
worth the effort, I know that the answer will be poor.

I’m not all that worried about poor data, If I can write a blog at 12:50 am on a Friday night about the intricacies of a Gaussian Distribution, I’m not going to have any trouble filling 5 pages in Latex on the topic.