it's a puzzle...

New House!

Angelina and I are finally the proud owners of our first house! I apologize to some of you because we’ve been preoccupied with getting the deal through some ups and downs. And then more ups and downs.

But if you’re passing through Pittsburgh, drop us a line, since we have plenty of guest space. We hope [...]

Chemistry Visualization Lecture

A colleague here at the University of Pittsburgh recently asked me to give a guest lecture for her graduate class in scientific visualization.

I took the opportunity to point the students to some of the nice work from Mario Valle on errors and mysteries in chemical visualization and standard data and representations. Indeed, preparing the lecture [...]

Nano Energy Generation

The group of Dr. Zhong Lin at Georgia Tech has recently been pumping out a range of interesting papers on the use of zinc oxide (ZnO) “nanoribbons” for energy generation. (People may be best aware of ZnO as a sunscreen material — you used to smear the white stuff on your nose.)

The basic principal is [...]

Wired Gallery: Striking SPM Images

On the subject of scientific visualization, Wired magazine just showcased a gallery of images on the nanoscale from scanned-probe microscopes (SPM): Scientists Scan Striking Nanoscale Images.

To me, the images are striking not just artistically, but that they really show the level of detail we can image these days. The images showcase individual atoms and molecules [...]

Visualizing Molecular Structure / Property Correlations

Recently, I wrote to ask for suggestions in chemistry visualizations. Rajarshi Guha wrote in with several suggestions. One of the most interesting to me was to map results or numeric data to structures themselves:

In terms of mol vis itself, Iâ��d like to see useful ways of mapping things to structures themselves – so fragment properties [...]

Chemistry, “Tool Building,” and Brunelleschi’s Dome

It sits atop the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore, and is larger than the dome of the US Capitol, St. Paul’s in London, or even St. Peter’s in Rome. It was built before any of them, in 1436. No scaffolding was used, nor does it need external support.

Filippo Brunelleschi has been celebrated as an architectural [...]