A synchrotron is a large machine (about the size of a football field) that accelerates electrons to almost the speed of light. As the electrons are deflected through magnetic fields they create extremely bright light. The light is channelled down beamlines to experimental workstations where it is used for research.

Synchrotron applications:
Synchrotron light is advancing research and development in fields as diverse as:
- biosciences (protein crystallography and cell biology)
- medical research (microbiology, disease mechanisms,
- environmental sciences (toxicology, atmospheric research, clean combustion and cleaner industrial production technologies)
- agriculture (plant genomics, soil studies, animal and plant imaging)
- advanced materials (nanostructured materials, intelligent polymers, ceramics, light metals and alloys, electronic and magnetic materials)
- forensics (identification of suspects from extremely small and dilute samples).

USERS WORKSHOP
The joint workshop of the Australian Synchrotron and the Australian Synchrotron Research Program will be held at Rydges Melbourne (186 Exhibition St) from Wednesday 29 November to Friday 1 December 2006.

More on registration … 

NASA has said it over and over again: The coming missions to finish the International Space Station are among the hardest and most complex ever.

But if you ask the astronauts and engineers which of the final 14 assembly flights may be the most complex, many would point to Discovery’s next mission, set to launch in December.
“What makes this one singularly unique is the fact that we’re going to rewire the space station,” Mark Polansky, Discovery’s commander, said.

More from NASA …

On Friday, the School of Thinking celebrated it’s 27th Anniversary.

At that time, Edward de Bono and I had formed a business partnership to sell consulting services in the USA and so we were meeting with senior managements of Fortune 500 corporations in New York like Citicorp and so on. We registered the consultancy as a New York Corporation–Edward de Bono & Associates Inc–and we were the only two shareholders. We agreed that Edward would be the major shareholder and I was Managing Director.

Working in the US market, I soon began to see the potential of a national project for ‘teaching thinking’ and developed a scalable method for teaching ‘teachers of thinking’ based on the Scheyville train-the-trainer method I had learned in the Australian Army during the Vietnam war.

So, on November 17th, 1979 I met with Edward de Bono, at JFK in New York and put forward my idea of training “teachers of thinking” in a properly instituted school of thinking.

He agreed with the idea and offered to contribute his CoRT Thinking syllabus. We co-founded the School of Thinking in New York City and launched the “Learn-To-Think Project” whose stated goal was to create “500,000 thinking instructors by 1985″.

Because Edward de Bono was still employed as a Professor of Investigative Medicine at Cambridge University in the UK he could only contribute part time. We agreed that he would be appointed Chairman and I would run SOT on a daily basis as Managing Director. Edward and I co-authored and published Learn-To-Think: Coursebook and Instructor’s Manual (Capra/New, Santa Barbara 1982) which set out both the CoRT Thinking lessons and how to train them using the Scheyville train-the-trainer method.

In January 1980 I recruited SOT’s first intake (01/80) of 50 trainees and within 100 days I trained and graduated our first class of ‘thinking instructors’–also the first in the world! Dr Eric Bienstock was a member of that first intake graduating top of the class and subsequently he became the first Chief Instructor SOT.

Today, Eric is Vice Principal SOT and lives in New Jersey with his wife Jane. Their daughter, Elizabeth, was an SOT baby and is now a rising advertising thought-leader in Manhattan. Eric became internationnally recognised for his idea of 3-Minute Thinking.

Happy birthday to the school and all who have trained in her since 1979!!

More SOT history …

It’s virtually impossible to get knowledge-workers to do their job much better than they are currently doing in their environment.

Why? Because, in order to ensure their survival, people behave intelligently according to their environment. This is why exhortation doesn’t work. It’s also why ‘productivity drives’ are not lasting. It’s why ‘innovation training’ so often fails to take hold.

Unless their environment makes it intelligent behaviour to offer innovation then knowledge-workers just won’t do so. People may wear the badges, parrot the slogans and mantras but if their managers, workplace, tools and metrics do not provide them an innovation environment then they cannot do their jobs any better than they are currently doing in that environment.

Thought-leaders like GOOGLE and PIXAR are obvious example of companies that have reached and gone beyond their itpoe.

What is itpoe?

itpoe = the innovation tipping point of the enterprise

Below the itpoe threshold an enterprise cannot be said to be an innovation environment. Once itpoe has been reached then the enterprise IS an innovation environment and so the people in that environment will find that it is now intelligent behaviour to offer innovation. And, naturally they do so.

Getting to itpoe & the itpoe audit.

Ask yourself these questions about your own enterprise:
• How would you rate your innovation environment? Pre or post itpoe?
• How are you getting to itpoe?
• How close are you to your itpoe?
• When will you get there?
• How do you know?
• What metrics do you use?
• Who cares?

These and other itpoe questions are occupying the minds and driving the strategies of the leaders of enterprise innovation.

For a range of reasons, not the least of which is a special treat for your own personal entertainment and enlightenment, I hope you can close your door for an hour and sit back and enjoy this very recent lecture by Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins on his current tour of the US about his latest best-selling book–’The God Delusion’.

NOTE: Richard Dawkins reads excerpts from The God Delusion and anwsers questions at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia on October 23, 2006. This Q&A features many questions from the rent-a-crowd students from Jerry Falwell’s so-called Liberty “University”. It makes for an amusing event.

Richard Dawkins signs his book. 

Here’s a simple audit for you to rate your own brainpower. It was designed by Dr Eric Bienstock who is Vice-Principal of SOT in New York. Eric based this checklist on the SOT’s Learn-To-Think Coursebook and Instructors Manual (Michael Hewitt-Gleeson & Edward de Bono, Capra/New 1982).

How do you rate your own brainpower? 

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer each of the following questions, scoring
either 3, 2, 1, or 0 points for each answer depending on your
objective estimate of how often you actually do what is stated.
Use your best guess of the following criteria for scoring:

3 - 90% OF THE TIME (nearly always)
2 - 70% OF THE TIME (mostly)
1 - 40% OF THE TIME (often)
0 - 10% OF THE TIME (hardly ever)

SCORE

______ My judgements of ideas are based on the value of the idea rather
than on my emotions at the time.

_______ I judge ideas not just as “good” or “bad” but also as “interesting”
if they can lead on to better ideas.

_______ I consider all factors in a situation before choosing, deciding or planning.

_______ I consider all factors first, before picking out the ones that matter most.

_______ When I create a rule I see to it that it is clearly understood
and possible to obey.

_______ I try to see the purpose of rules I have to obey, even if I don’t like the rules.

_______ I look at consequences of my decisions or actions not only as they affect me
but also as they affect other people.

_______ I look at a wide range of possible consequences before deciding
which consequences to bother about.

_______ On the way to a final objective I establish a chain of smaller objectives
each one following on from the previous one.

_______ The objectives I set are near enough, real enough and possible
enough for me to really try to reach them.

_______ In planning, I know exactly what I want to achieve.

_______ I keep my plans as simple and direct as possible.

_______ I know exactly why I have chosen something as a priority.

_______ I try to get as many different ideas as possible first,
before starting to pick out the priorities.

_______ I will go on looking for alternatives until I find one I really like.

_______ While most people look for alternatives when they are not satisfied;
I look for them deliberately even when I am satisfied.

_______ I am able to tell myself the real reason behind a decision I make.

_______ Before making a decision, I consider the factors, look at the consequences,
get clear about the objectives, assess the priorities, and search for possible alternatives.

_______ I am able to see the other person’s point-of-view whether I agree with it or not.

_______ I am able to spell out the differences and similarities between different viewpoints.

_______ TOTAL SCORE.

INTERPRETATION

Don’t panic, this is NOT a scientific test. It’s just an audit or checklist to help you take stock of your thinking, that’s all! A trained thinker can direct his
or her thinking and use it in a deliberate manner to produce an effect.
To a trained and skilled thinker, thinking is a tool that can be used at will
and the use of this tool is practical. This ability to use ‘thinking as a skill’
is the sort of thinking ability that is required to get things DONE.

* If your total score in this test was between 51 and 60 points,
you may already possess superior brainpower.
* If you scored between 31 and 50 points, you may have better than average brainpower.
* If you scored between 0 and 30, you may possess no additional brainpower
other than the natural thinking ability that most people have.

___________ Record your score and any comments you have:

Time magazine cover story:

It’s a debate that long predates Darwin, but the anti-religion position is being promoted with increasing insistence by scientists angered by intelligent design and excited, perhaps intoxicated, by their disciplines’ increasing ability to map, quantify and change the nature of human experience. Brain imaging illustrates — in color — the physical seat of the will and the passions, challenging the religious concept of a soul independent of glands and gristle. Brain chemists track imbalances that could account for the ecstatic states of visionary saints or, some suggest, of Jesus.

Catholicism’s Christoph Cardinal Schönborn has dubbed the most fervent of faith-challenging scientists followers of “scientism” or “evolutionism,” since they hope science, beyond being a measure, can replace religion as a worldview and a touchstone.

It is not an epithet that fits everyone wielding a test tube. But a growing p