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Occasionally, I check the preprint server to see how many citations my paper has had. Although there are close to twenty professional publications where I am listed as an author, this particular paper is the one that I count as mine, since I both wrote the paper and performed the analysis. Basically, my paper is the one that presents the results of my dissertation analysis. I am quite proud of it, partially because it is my dissertation analysis and partially because I am the first author on a paper by a large (~120 member) collaboration published in the most respected physics journal (Physical Review Letters).
Anyway, since the paper was released to the preprint server in September 2002 (publication in PRL did not happen until February 2003), I have noticed that the number of citations it has received has averaged about one per month. The past half-year has been busy and, as such, I have not checked on it in some time. Checking yesterday, I see that there are at least six new citations, for a total of fifty-six in a total of forty-four months. That's an average of 1.27 citations per month. Not too shabby. I haven't discovered neutrino oscillation, or anything exciting like that, but still quite respectable!
The reason that I thought to check on the citations yesterday is that I was speaking to a professor here at Oxford who heard me present my results at the 28th International Cosmic Ray Conference in Japan, back in 2003. He and I actually had a bit of a conversation after my talk, as he is interested in the low energy atmospheric neutrinos that made up the irreducible background for my supernova relic neutrino (SRN) search.
To be honest, I haven't thought about the SRN in anything other than the most general terms for quite a number of months. Maybe longer. Then, this evening, I receive an e-mail (sent to both my FNAL and Oxford addresses -- so it must be serious) from a well known neutrino theorist. She is working to reproduce the results presented in my thesis and is asking me for numerical files corresponding to some of the figures in my dissertation. How's that for coincidence? So it looks like I'm going to need to track down and dig through some old work to find what she is looking for. That's the "Past" part of this post.
The "Present" part is slightly cheating -- it is actually the recent past. While on Auger, I worked extensively on the construction, calibration, maintenance, and operation of a Central Laser Facility (CLF). Before leaving Fermilab, I drafted a technical paper about the CLF, which is currently circulating amongst internal reviewers in the collaboration will hopefully soon be submitted to a refereed journal for publication. I spent nearly an entire day last week implementing comments and suggestions from two collaborators and I before I go home tonight, I need to poke LRW and remind him to re-make Figure 6 for the paper.
[Addendum: Less then two hours after writing this, I got an e-mail from the chair of the Auger Publications Committee regarding the CLF paper and the road to journal submission.]
And the "Future", of course, is here at Oxford, working on the CRESST experiment in the cryodetector group. Technically, this is the present but, as I have only been here for a little over a month, I still have a long way to go before I am able to contribute effectively. Lately, with our supply of liquid helium currently depleted (and the department's liquefier currently non-operational), I have been reading like it was going out of style. I am concurrently reading a CRESST dissertation, a textbook on low temperature physics, a safety manual, and the manual for ROOT (a powerful physics analysis tool). Speaking of CRESST, here is an short-but-interesting recent article from New Scientist about the experiment.
So, interestingly enough, Past and Present and Future have all collided. I now have tasks to do related to Super-Kamiokande, the Pierre Auger Observatory, and the CRESST experiment. I guess these multi-experiment demands are some sort of indication that I am coming into maturity as a physicist. Of course, that doesn't even count the time I am spending reading about the D-Zero experiment, for I am also editing![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gyades's dissertation.
Hopefully this post will satisfy those folks who were asking for more physics content in this space.
Anyway, since the paper was released to the preprint server in September 2002 (publication in PRL did not happen until February 2003), I have noticed that the number of citations it has received has averaged about one per month. The past half-year has been busy and, as such, I have not checked on it in some time. Checking yesterday, I see that there are at least six new citations, for a total of fifty-six in a total of forty-four months. That's an average of 1.27 citations per month. Not too shabby. I haven't discovered neutrino oscillation, or anything exciting like that, but still quite respectable!
The reason that I thought to check on the citations yesterday is that I was speaking to a professor here at Oxford who heard me present my results at the 28th International Cosmic Ray Conference in Japan, back in 2003. He and I actually had a bit of a conversation after my talk, as he is interested in the low energy atmospheric neutrinos that made up the irreducible background for my supernova relic neutrino (SRN) search.
To be honest, I haven't thought about the SRN in anything other than the most general terms for quite a number of months. Maybe longer. Then, this evening, I receive an e-mail (sent to both my FNAL and Oxford addresses -- so it must be serious) from a well known neutrino theorist. She is working to reproduce the results presented in my thesis and is asking me for numerical files corresponding to some of the figures in my dissertation. How's that for coincidence? So it looks like I'm going to need to track down and dig through some old work to find what she is looking for. That's the "Past" part of this post.
The "Present" part is slightly cheating -- it is actually the recent past. While on Auger, I worked extensively on the construction, calibration, maintenance, and operation of a Central Laser Facility (CLF). Before leaving Fermilab, I drafted a technical paper about the CLF, which is currently circulating amongst internal reviewers in the collaboration will hopefully soon be submitted to a refereed journal for publication. I spent nearly an entire day last week implementing comments and suggestions from two collaborators and I before I go home tonight, I need to poke LRW and remind him to re-make Figure 6 for the paper.
[Addendum: Less then two hours after writing this, I got an e-mail from the chair of the Auger Publications Committee regarding the CLF paper and the road to journal submission.]
And the "Future", of course, is here at Oxford, working on the CRESST experiment in the cryodetector group. Technically, this is the present but, as I have only been here for a little over a month, I still have a long way to go before I am able to contribute effectively. Lately, with our supply of liquid helium currently depleted (and the department's liquefier currently non-operational), I have been reading like it was going out of style. I am concurrently reading a CRESST dissertation, a textbook on low temperature physics, a safety manual, and the manual for ROOT (a powerful physics analysis tool). Speaking of CRESST, here is an short-but-interesting recent article from New Scientist about the experiment.
So, interestingly enough, Past and Present and Future have all collided. I now have tasks to do related to Super-Kamiokande, the Pierre Auger Observatory, and the CRESST experiment. I guess these multi-experiment demands are some sort of indication that I am coming into maturity as a physicist. Of course, that doesn't even count the time I am spending reading about the D-Zero experiment, for I am also editing
gyades's dissertation.Hopefully this post will satisfy those folks who were asking for more physics content in this space.
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From:
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From:
no subject
I better means of searching is to use SPIRES, a high energy physics database -- for jobs, papers, people, etc. -- maintained by Stanford University. SPIRES links all authors on a paper, not just one, so you can find me that way. Google it or just go here (http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/). If you do a search on "find a malek, m" (with the "a" indicating an author search), you will get twenty-five hits, ordered chronologically. The first twenty-two are mine. The last three, from the 70s and 80s, are obviously not.
Hope this helps!
From:
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I'm just glad my semester is over. I kinda blew up this time around. Fortunately, being at UNLV gives me a lot of laurels to rest on(1), so everyone was understanding. But still... I'm burned out.
(1) I like my faculty. It's a great department and being one of the smart kids gets me a lot of faculty interaction. The student body blows goats. I stopped editing undergraduate papers after I found a sentance with no verb.
From:
no subject
Thanks, Sweetie! I'm happy to prove that one can be a failure at Poly Prep and still kick arse in the so-called "real world." :)
I'm looking forward to the day that my first journal article comes out.
What is it about?
I'm just glad my semester is over. I kinda blew up this time around. Fortunately, being at UNLV gives me a lot of laurels to rest on(1), so everyone was understanding. But still... I'm burned out.
I understand burnout, yes indeed. Congrats on surviving a rough semester and hopefully you can recover a bit now. What are you studying at UNLV, anyway?
As for student papers... yeah, I've seen some awful ones. Not that I've had to grade them, but
From:
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It's a tough area to research, because the focus of most USian history has not been on women of color, and the research that has been done on women of color during this time has more focused on enslaved women, rather than free women. And when you through sexuality in to the mix, you get either a subject that people want to avoid, or papers that read like pornos.
As to what I'm studying, I've got 2 undergrad degrees, one in Lit and one in History with a concentration on Early American. Where I go from here, *shrug* it depends on the day. I'm torn between wanting to go in to academe and pursuing my MA and PhD in Early American Intellectual with a foucs on the development of American racial and gender theory. Or I'm thinking of going to law school to do a joint JD/MPP.
Other days, I never want to go to school again and live in a cave on top of a mountian where I never have to talk to anyone but the voices in my head again.
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As for academic careers... whatever you decide, you should know -- and you probably already do --that the urge to flee to the mountaintops is a recurring part of the academic's life. Why do you think professors get to go on sabbaticals? ;)
From:
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And then it dawned on me that if I get my PhD., I could get a nice job somewhere where someone will give me a highspeed internet connection and access to all the academic databases I could ever desire... and they'll pay me to pontificate. Even the downside doesn't bother me all that much. I've served as an undergraduate rep to the department, so I've even sat in on the pointless and rambling department meetings and had some input on new faculty. I'd probably lose points for collegiality, unless I was in the right department though. I still run with scissors and I don't share well with the other kids and stuff.
I dunno... The house in Halifax started as a joke that's taken on something of a life of its own. I'm half ready to pack. D.'s always the more cautious one, and he's even at the point where he's decided that if the house is still on the market in November, that might be a sign.
From:
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As for the brownie points awarded for collegiality, you just have to get a job in the right place. You and I aren't folks meant for the mainsteam...
I hope that you do get out of the States and think that you will be happier if you do. Since leaving, I have found that my standard of living has gone down... but the quality of life has gone up. Still need to find me a house, though!
From:
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I'll probably get my PhD in either Lit or History. I'm actually thinking of doing some work that combines both. If journalism is the first draft of history, the novel is probably the second.
How are real estate prices in the UK? (ugh, we sound so grown up!!)
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From:
Thanks for the Infomation
From:
Re: Thanks for the Infomation