In these interviews, scientists talk to ScienceWatch.com and
offer behind-the-scenes insights into their research: reflections on
what led them to their chosen field, the motivation driving their work
in a given direction, and the challenges encountered along on the way.
These authors also offer their views on why their work has wielded
particular influence in the scientific community, as indicated by
Clarivate
citation data, and on how research in their respective fields has
progressed over time and will likely unfold in the future.
Featured interviews for February 2009 are listed
below. To view featured interviews from past months/years, visit the
Featured Interviews Main Menu.
Excerpt from the
interview: "after discussing
futuristic applications of WMNSs,
we analyze the state of the art in
algorithms, protocols, and hardware
for wireless multimedia sensor
networks, and discuss open research
issues in detail. Furthermore, we
discuss architectures for WMSNs,
along with their advantages and
drawbacks. We believe that our
paper is and will be an important
resource for researchers interested
in this field..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "The prospect of
"crops that fight weeds," in terms
of crop plants that exude natural
herbicides to suppress competing
weeds, is attracting increased
attention. The potential economic
and environmental benefits may be
striking if this trait is exploited
in much the same way as defense
mechanisms..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "ENCODE was one of
a series of projects that followed
on the human genome project. At the
end of 2003, people knew the human
genome was going to be finished;
they knew the path forward for the
mouse and rat genomes. There was a
kind of logical follow-up for other
important organisms. The question
was, what else do we need
to..."
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Excerpt from the
interview: "The paper examines
an issue identified in the
geomorphological development of
upland northwest Britain, in which
there appears to have been a
significant increase in hillslope
instability in the last 3,000
years. The paper presents new data
that place this interpretation on a
firmer chronological footing,
through the wider application of
radiocarbon dating to the alluvial
fan sediments that have accumulated
at the base of hillslope gully
networks. ..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "In our paper, we
demonstrated that
vertically-aligned single-walled
carbon nanotube arrays can be used
for a successful synthetic approach
to mimic gecko foot-hairs to
develop advanced dry adhesives with
fairly reversible semiconducting
behaviors under load and provide an
excellent thermal resistance, due
to the unique..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "...the paper
highlighted a growing recognition
that mineral dusts may play complex
roles in affecting climate, due not
only to their impacts on radiative
transfer but also due to their
action as favored nuclei for
forming warm and cold clouds. Our
paper confirmed, through actual
airborne measurements, the
particular..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "This paper
described a range of gene-deletion
events from the pathogens that
cause tuberculosis, a.k.a. the
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
complex. The work gave us our first
insight into how this complex of
bacteria has evolved over time,
uncovered molecular markers for the
tubercle bacilli, and
identified..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "My research is
always international in nature. I
develop theory and test it with
international, cross-national, or
comparative data. I am primarily
interested in how country-level
institutions affect economic and
business issues, and how
globalization is changing
country-level institutions and
dynamics. I have explored a
number..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "The field of
metabolic engineering began to
emerge in the early 1990s with the
advent of recombinant DNA
technology and the realization that
microbes could be genetically
engineered to become, in essence,
little chemical factories for the
production of fuels and chemicals.
However, the idea of engineering
microbes for fuels..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "Superstring theory
is the only candidate for the
theory of everything. It is also
the only theory that admits a
consistent perturbative formulation
of quantum gravity. People used to
think that there are five different
superstring theories, but it was
later realized, through a web of
dualities, that all superstring
theories are unified in a single
theory, called M theory..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "The field is
developing extremely fast.
Considering that the field is only
four years old, we’ve made
enormous progress. Virtually every
month, it seems, someone comes up
with an entirely new observation
and so a completely new area of
research on graphene. There’s
also ever-increasing interest from
industry..."
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "Bayesian
methods for data analysis allow
great flexibility for handling
complex problems and including
multiple sources of evidence, but
had been hampered for years by
computational problems. Around 1990
it was realized that
simulation-based techniques could
be adapted, and this led to an
explosion of activity, and we
developed..."
View Article
A listing of the top 20 countries
which, as of the latest bimonthly
update of Essential Science
Indicators, attracted the
highest total citations to their
papers published in
Clarivate-indexed
journals of Economics &
Business over the 10-year +
10-month period, (1998-October 31,
2008). These countries are of a
pool of 81 countries comprising the
top 50% ranked by total citation
count in this field.
View Article
In this article,
ScienceWatch.com presents
a listing of the top 20
institutions ranked by total
citations which, according to our
Special Topic on
tuberculosis
(TB), attracted the highest total
citations to their papers published
on the topic in
Clarivate-indexed
journals.
View Article
Excerpt from the
interview: "A photonic crystal
is like a crystal of
atoms—silicon, for
instance—but magnified 10,000
times. The nice thing about
colloidal crystals is they have
just the right length scales for
these photonic crystals. You can
make really big crystals, fairly
easily; you don’t need any
complicated fabrication
infrastructure. The downside,
though, is that photonic..."
View Article
(Additional
interviews/commentaries may be
added during February 2009.)