Morgan Sparks, the man who made the first junction transistor dies aged 91

Morgan Sparks, who invented the junction transistor, the first practical transistor device died on Saturday at his daughter's home in Fullerton, Calif., at the age of 91.

He said of Bell Laboratories approach to introducing the device...."It was quite different from other laboratories. I think AT&T recognized that, as compensation perhaps for their role as a monopoly, they had some obligations. And so the labs were really very open. And, you know, the transistor, it took a few months to get patents filed and things of that nature, and there was a bit of a battle with the military, who wanted to keep it secret. And the lab's attitude prevailed, and it was essentially thrown open. Licensing agreements were offered to anybody in the world."

William Shockley’s theories about p-n junctions had been validated by tests by Richard Haynes in 1948 . Haynes put electrodes on both sides of a thin germanium crystal and took very sensitive measurements of the size and speed of the current. Electricity definitely flowed straight through the crystal. That meant Shockley's vision of a new kind of transistor was theoretically possible..... but fabricating a working junction transistor presented formidable challenges.

Few listened to Bell Labs chemist Gordon Teal who argued that large, single crystals of germanium and silicon would be required as opposed to cutting a sliver from a larger ingot of many crystals

Using a technique developed in 1917 by the Polish chemist Jan Czochralski, Teal , working with engineer John Little suspended a small “seed” crystal of germanium in a crucible of molten germanium and slowly withdrew it, forming a long, narrow, single crystal.

Shockley was later to call this achievement “the most important scientific development in the semiconductor field in the early days.”

But beautiful single crystals are fine but a sandwich transistor (as distinct from point type) needed a sandwich crystal. The outer layers had to be a semiconductor with either too many electrons (known as N-type) or too few (known as P-type), while the inner layer was the opposite.

Morgan Sparks developed Teals crystal growing techniques and fabricated p-n junctions by seeding tiny pellets of impurities into the molten germanium during the crystal-growing process. In April 1950, he and Teal began adding two successive pellets into the melt, the first with a p-type impurity (gallium) and the second n-type (antinomy) , forming n-p-n structures with a thin inner, or base, layer.

Sparks and Teal etched away the surface of the outside layers, leaving a tiny bit of P-type crystal protruding. They attached a fine electrode-creating a circuit the way Shockley had suggested. 58 years ago on April 12, 1950, they tested what they had built. Without a doubt, more current came out of the sandwich than went in. They had a tiny working amplifier.

A year later, after refining the crystal growing proces such “grown-junction transistors” surpassed the best point-contact transistors in performance. Bell Labs announced this advance on July 4th, 1951 in a press conference featuring Shockley. (Sparks, Morgan and Teal, Gordon K. “Method of Making P-N Junctions in Semiconductor Materials,” U. S. Patent 2,631,356 (Filed June 15, 1950. Issued March 17, 1953)

In 1954, Bell Labs and Texas Instruments fabricated the first successful silicon transistors. The following year Bell Labs chemist Morris Tanenbaum developed the first silicon junction transistor using diffusion of trace impurities to grow ultra-thin base layers less than one micrometer thick.

The rest, as they say ... is history.

A revised system for harmful Drug classification

Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse -The Lancet 2007; 369:1047-1053 23rd March 2007
Prof David Nutt , Leslie A King PhD , William Saulsbury & Prof Colin Blakemore

The capacity of humans to harm themselves with self medicated drugs, legal or illegal is remarkable. In response their use is regulated by a byzantine system that is somewhat like Topsy .. it er ... just growed.

Harmful drugs are now regulated in the UK and eslewhere according to statutory classification systems that purport to relate to the perceived harms and risks of each drug. It is evident that the system in use is not systematic. It is not evidence based. It is illogical and irrational.

e.g Evidence to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. Para 83

On the matter of why psilocin, one of the hallucinogenic compounds found in magic mushrooms, was in Class A, Sir Michael told us: "it is there because it is there […] there have been very few publications on psilocin. It has hardly been investigated at all"

Drug misuse is a major social, legal, and public-health problem and it places a huge burden on cash, resources and manpower. In the UK this is estimated at £10-16 Bn a year.

Current methods to counter drug misuse are;

1. Interdiction of supply (Police / Customs / NHS monitoring)
2. Education - although it is not directly the responsibility or function of any department of State - much of it is done by private charities.
3. Treatment - which is handled by a mix of NHS, Social Services, prisons, and private charities.

Currently all illegal drugs are classified under the Misuse of Drugs Act of 1971 A, B, and C— intended to indicate the dangers of each drug, class A being the most harmful and class C the least. The consequences of this affect both the determining of the legal penalties for importation, supply, and possession, but the degree of police / prison effort targeted at restricting its use.

Elsewhere drug classification systems are used that purport to be structured according to the relative risks and dangers of illicit drugs. The process of classification is unclear ill-defined, opaque, and apparently arbitrary.

The authors have attempted to arrive at a novel, logical, consistent ascending/descending classification for the most frequently used drugs in Western Society.

First they identify 3 principal factors -

Physical Harm

Damage to organs or systems— effect on physiological functions—eg, respiratory and cardiac—is a major determinant of physical harm. The mrthod of administration is relevant intravenous use —eg, heroin—carry a high risk of causing sudden death from respiratory depression. Tobacco and alcohol cause illness and death as a result of chronic long term use. Long-term cigarette smoking reduces life expectancy, on average, by 10 years. Tobacco and alcohol together account for about 90% of all drug-related deaths in the UK.

Dependence

The pleasure induced by drugs has essentially 2 components - the initial, rapid effect (the rush) and the euphoria that follows this, often extending over several hours (the high). The rush's intesity is directly realted to the speed the drug hits the brain - hence the street response to formulate drugs in ways that allow them to be injected intravenously or smoked - so the hit only takes 30 seconds. The nasal mucosa provides an amazing rapid response for cocaine. Medically many drugs are supplied as anal suppositories as the rectum is rich in blood vessels and provides fast uptake (often used for Valium) - there doesn't appear to be any such formulations in use ...yet.

Social effects

Intoxication, however induced damages the person, their ability to work, their family and has widespread effects and costs borne by health care, social care, and police.

Drug use leads to accidental damage to the user, to others, and to property directly or indirectly by driving motor vehicles, using machinery. Addiction leads to criminal activity to fund the habit and has secondaru effects on family life, nutrition and ability to work.

Use of drugs causes immense health-care costs. Tobacco is estimated to cause up to 40% of all hospital illness and 60% of drug-related fatalities. Alcohol is involved in over half of all visits to accident and emergency departments and orthopaedic admissions.

Intravenous use of drugs helps also spread needle borne diseases, HIV, MDRTB, and Hepatitis with further consequences and costs for society.

Designing the system

Assessment of harm

The authors designed a straightforward2 dimensional matrix with 12 risk factors - created by dividing each of the three major categories of harm into four subgroups, described above. A four-point scale, with 0 being no risk, 1 some, 2 moderate, and 3 extreme risk is 4 .

Experts were then asked to score the drugs surveyed and a remarkably coherent view was reached, which although to a degree subjective and arbitrary was undertaken by a standard route. The average of the results obtained is given.

The results show that the current system in use in the UK is not consistent - as the authors conclude -

"The results of this study do not provide justification for the sharp A, B, or C divisions of the current classifications in the UK Misuse of Drugs Act. Distinct categorisation is, of course, convenient for setting of priorities for policing, education, and social support, as well as to determine sentencing for possession or dealing. But neither the rank ordering of drugs nor their segregation into groups in the Misuse of Drugs Act classification is supported by the more complete assessment of harm described here."

There three charts provided, that are the most useful way to understand their method and results.

1 Mean harm scores for 20 substances

2. Mean independent group scores in each of the three categories of harm, for 20 substances, ranked by their overall score, and mean scores for each of the three subscales
3. The 20 substances assessed, showing their current status under the Misuse of Drugs Act
Other organisations (eg, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (A) and the CAM committee of the Dutch government(B) are currently exploring other risk assessment systems, some of which are also numerically based.

Let us hope that this will lead to a more rational understanding of the problems drug use, both legal and illegal, and bring to the discussion of public policy and the associated plans for dealing with it, by the law, health, prison and educational systems.

(A) EMCDDA. Guidelines for the risk assessment of new synthetic drugs. Luxembourg: EMCDDA, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1999.

(B) van Amsterdam JDC, Best W, Opperhuizen A, de Wolff FA. Evaluation of a procedure to assess the adverse effects of illicit drugs. Regul Pharmacol Toxicol 2004; 39: 1-4.

This paper was prepared as Appendix 10 to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. Drug classification: making a hash of it? Fifth Report of Session 2005–06, 2006 (see also here Nick at the Scientist Activist)

Why the cost of your passport has trebled - FCO buys new computers

Hanslope Park, Bucks. FCO spook Palace expands in £320 MN facelift


Buckinghamshire is awash with spooky sites as a visit to Alan Turnbull's "Secret Bases" will reveal. He has for the New Year a spanking new aerial picture of Hanslope Park which he says houses the Her Majesty's Government Communications Centre (HMGCC) This absorbs 80% of the Hanslope Park estate and also is home to MI6's Technical Security Department (TSD), staffed by SIS operatives who process and analyse data sent from GCHQ in Cheltenham and Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, especially data intercepted from the foreign embassies in London.

Noteworthy is the 3 story building (left of centre) over 6500 square metres of floor space – under construction , on a former car park, valued at £30Mn. Which is, Turnbull says the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's (FCO) new Information and Communications Technology Centre, due for use at the end of 2007.

In 2005, the FCO signed a record-breaking £190 million, 7 year contract (it's largest computer purchase todate) with Hewlett Packard (HP) to provide the hardware and software for the next generation of the FCO's secure global IT desktop infrastructure, code name: "Future Firecrest". (See FCO explanation why they need it here to the HOC Public Accounts Committee Jan 2005).... " The e-Diplomacy Strategy was launched in January 2004 to develop the ICT component of the wider FCO Strategy. The e-Diplomacy Strategy seeks to transform the FCO into a single on-line global organisation delivering high quality services to the public ....z z z z zzzzzzzzzz....zzz"

The FCO's internal costs bring the total project value to more than £320 million – the largest contract ever signed by the UK Foreign Office. The system will be managed centrally from the new ICT Building at Hanslope Park, where hundreds more FCO staff from central London will be relocated at the end of the project in 2012 - tracking tortured souls in Uzbek jails and "rendered" CIA prisoners no doubt for Mrs Beckett.... although the Public Accounts committee were told about abducted Czechs and the problems of Stag parties in Prague losing their passports.

Let's hope it's one of the Gubment computer systems that works. For more fascinating views of UK Government spooky real estate give the site a visit.

Platinum, a neat bit of photochemistry, nanospheres and where drugs act in the cell...

John Shelnut and colleagues at Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque as well as the University of Georgia in Athens have developed a novel system for developing , hollow, porous platinum nanospheres which might enable researchers to identify where drugs react within cell structures.

Liposomes are familiar biological structures, that are effectively balls of fat that enable the contents to be carried in the body, isolating and insulating the contents until they are released to act. For example liposomes have an ability to target cancer because typically less than 400nm, they can rapidly enter tumour sites from the blood, but are kept in the bloodstream by the endothelial cell walls which they cannot permeate. Currently available anti- Cancer drugs such as Doxorubicin (Doxil a liposomal injenction for ovarian cancers)) and Daunorubicin (Daunoxome - a liposomal injection for treating AIS related Karposi's sarcoma) utilise this "liposome delivery".

Shelnut and his colleagues utilised a manufactured liposome containing a light activated porphyrin catalyst (the active part of photosynthetic proteins) containing tin - placed in a platinum salt solution and irradiated with light - this precipitates or stimulates the photocatalyst to transfer electrons to the platinum ions and as the atoms build up sheets or dendrites of the metal are formed as hollow metal spheres. Dissolving the liposomes reveals the structures (see pic) which have the shape of the liposomes of up to 200 nm aggregates of foam like structures. The trick to developing the structures depends upon the initial levels of tin so that sufficient platinum is deposited. The size of the nanostructures can be altered by changing the porphyrin concentration, the concentration of platinum in solution, the amount of light illuminating the reaction and the length of time the light was on.

One application is "nanotagging" of biological structures such as drug molecules.

"This would involve labeling the drug by attaching a porphyrin molecule and, after allowing the drug to bind to a cell, using light to grow a nanometer-sized particle. The nanoparticles can then be imaged with electron microscopy to reveal the location of the drug receptor molecules on the cell," Shelnut says. "This type of nanotagging technique might be used in non-biological applications as well - such as finding flaws in semiconductor surfaces."

Tantalisingly they suggest that "Further, nanocages composed of other metals and alloys can be made."

Sandia Labs are of course part of Lockheed Martin and see that can manipulate the nanoscale structure of platinum to have control over the size, porosity, composition, surface species, solubility, stability and other functional properties, they can redesigned nanometric platinum structures for use other applications, including catalysis, sensors and optoelectronic and magnetic devices. Find out more about this fascinating use of photochemistry at the Shelnut team website (http://jasheln.unm.edu/)

Platinum mining in the US

Stillwater Mining Company (NYSE:SMC) is a company controlled by Norimet Limited and Russian state owned, MMC Norilsk Nickel under NYSE Rule 303A.00 and is is the only U.S. producer of palladium and platinum. It is the largest primary producer of platinum group metals outside South Africa and Russia. Mining commenced in 1987, west of Nye, Montana. Platinum Group Metals (pgm) are extracted from the J-M Reef, which contains very high grades of pgm - about 20 g per tonne. Palladium accounts for about three-quarters of the pgm extracted, with the remainder largely platinum.

MMC Norilsk Nickel is the world's leading producer of nickel (19% share of world mined production) and palladium (52% share of world mined production) and is Russia's leading gold producer Ranked 4th for Platinum (12% share of world mined production)and among top 10 copper producers.

They signed agreements for mining in Western Siberia with bhp Billiton on June 12th, 2006 and with Rio Tinto Zinc on January 27th, 2006 for mining in Eastern and Far Eastern Siberia - More here.

References
Synthesis of Platinum Nanocages by Using Liposomes Containing Photocatalyst Molecules
Yujiang Song, Robert M. Garcia, Rachel M. Dorin, Haorong Wang, Yan Qiu, John A. Shelnutt
Angewandte Chemie Volume 118, Issue 48, 2006. Pages 8306-8310

Also here in pre-publication form from the Shelnut Group.