这种话大概也就是得诺贝尔之后才有资格讲
很多观点，甚至做法，在真正的科学家中是有共识的；但是，并不是每个人都有资格去那么总结。
回想我自己的第一个模型，也是在等待一位朋友的间歇，在门外反复踱步的时候想出来的。当然，并不是那一刻，短短时间的思考之功，而是已经做了很长时间的研究了，那一刻突然想通了而已。这种体验，每个学者大概都会有。
” 在孩提时代，每个人都拥有着许多种可能性。你既可能成为职业棒球选手，也可能成为歌剧演唱家。但是，到了二十岁左右，我们就知道了自己的局限，就会因种种原因而将各种可能性自行消去，同时也会追问自己到底想做什么。无论是谁，都要过这一关。此时，你只能严肃认真地对各种可能性加以权衡，选择自己想做的事、擅长做的事。”
这一段，正和我前几天写专业选择时所想到的一样，实际上越往后，知识、经验越多，但是可能性越少，我们没有办法进入所有领域，所以，年轻时的选择非常重要。另外，我们无法成为所有领域的专家，但我们在精进一门的同时，完全可以涉猎尽可能多的领域，这能保持科研生涯的idea永不枯竭。而且，当你写完相对论的时候玩玩小提琴，画完鸡蛋之后画画人体解剖图，这不也蛮好吗？
本庶佑：真正一流的工作往往没有在顶级刊物上发表
土木工程
现在的网络和以前很不一样了，以前写什么，对不对，大家回帖讨论一下就算了，现在任何一个观点都可能不知何时被无限放大，所以像以前那样的写作氛围没有了，想写点什么都很犹豫。今年听说一些传统行业的专业不是很受欢迎，当时就想写点，可也一直没写。
选择专业，在刚高考完的那个年纪，最重要的考量是什么？应该是多大程度上所学的能够参于到未来几十年的重要领域的进展中去。从这个角度，行业艰不艰苦，就业情况，有时不一定是第一考量。
人类知识的不断积累，和个体生命长度的有限，使得人类文明的传承不得不使用分工合作的办法，于是才有了分专业，每个人传承发展一部分知识。这种情况下，选了专业意味着与很大一部分其它领域的知识擦肩而过了，确实应该好好选择。
其它的专业不知道，就岩土来说，其实是有机会参于到未来的重要领域的。人离不开大地，哪怕上了天，也要寻找另一片土地落脚🦶。去年登月取样成功时就写过一篇，当时英文写的，登月，火星，这应该是非常有未来参于感的领域了。我们研究那里的土。
相对于其它材料，土体是很复杂的材料，可研究的角度也多，矿物成份，环境，植物生长。。。土体的各种现象，其实不仅限于土力学、打地基、盖房子。很有机会探寻新的主题，并且对赖以生存的大地的研究，也会是任一时代都不过时的题材。
↓↓↓Read more爱惜羽毛
最近审了好多稿，想起以前有一次在王老师家吃饭，王老师也谈到每年有很多评审。做为审阅人，你会在每个稿件上花多少时间呢？认真审的话，这一定是个很花时间精力的事。
无论时代怎么变，认真的同行评议一定是维持学术体系正常运转的重要方式——如果不说是唯一方式的话；如果该系统受到侵蚀，那么几乎等同于学术系统受到侵蚀。
对于每个人来说，无论是做为作者还是评审人，都要爱惜自己的羽毛，尤其是做为评审。很多时候，评审是匿名的，但即使匿名情况下，敷衍和偏见，长远而言，仍然影响评审人自己的声誉。
怀念王老师-岩坛漫话（第二版）-李广信-2010↓↓↓Read more
CRISPR-Cas9 – Genetic technology for the future
一些品质、理想和期待是科学家的共识
In classical ballet, artistic creativity is combined with strict discipline. Bacteriologist Emmanuelle Charpentier knows this all too well. Trained in classical ballet and piano, she says it’s not a bad background to have as a researcher citing this as the source of her meticulous accuracy and persistence through repetitive efforts. And, she adds, a scientist needs to cultivate her/his artistic side, be creative and a little bit crazy — at least sometimes.
Leisure: “I have been very busy with work in recent years and even more as a result of all the attention surrounding CRISPR-Cas9, but I really try to keep up with other interests too, such as sporting activities. I am very much interested in culture, art and design. I can at least find the time to listen to music while working, walking and thinking, and I enjoy listening to debates by philosophers and sociologists that question the world and our society. This is where I find my energy and balance.”
Best mode of transport: “Bike! I cycle wherever I am – Paris, New York, Vienna, Umeå, Braunschweig – and currently on a daily basis in Berlin.”
“I was and remain very passionate about the MIMS concept at Umeå University. It focuses on a very high level of education and research, with regard to both high-quality research and insight into how to promote fundamental research and the education of postgraduate students in the long term. The concept also takes into account that good research takes time and requires good working conditions in which a community pools its energy and the administrative burden is small. I appreciate that The Nordic EMBL Partnership for Molecular Medicine gave me the academic freedom I needed.”
可以说，驱动高水平科学家前进的动力，第一位的，永远是求知的渴望和对科学的热情。
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These photos remind me my time in Tsinghua. The slogan on the auditorium indicates that these photos must be made many years ago.
I love the straight road between the second gate and the west gate with ginkgo trees along both sides.
There is a lotus pool beside the road, which is famous because of the article “The Moonlight in the Lotus Pond”. This article was in our text book of middle school in my age, I am not sure if this is still the case now.
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他们说你是去了月球。。。
Today’s news that Chang’e 5 landed on the moon and planning to bring a sample of lunar soil back, called to my memory of my time in Tsinghua.
As I remember this Chang’e mission started about 15 years ago, almost the same time that I started in Tsinghua. If you are not a soil mechanics expert, you may not be able to imagine how this mission could be linked to soil mechanics. Actually, at the very beginning of the Chang’e mission, we were involved. The first task was to estimate the response of soil to the reentry capsule when it landed as planned somewhere in Inner Mongolia. (The planned landing spot for Chang’e 5 this time is still in Inner Mongolia.) The second task was to build a test area in Beijing, modelling the soil in Inner Mongolia, so that some experiment could be carried out in Beijing instead of Inner Mongolia. During those time, discussion on lunar soil sampling project already began, it is about 15 years ago. Now, finally, we see this mission carried out.
To model soil that does not exist on the earth is difficult. Our focus is on the mechanical behaviours of soil so that to provide basis for design of sampling machine and lunar vehicle. Some of issues that need to be considered include low gravity (1/6 of earth), vacuum condition and dry condition. The issue of gravity is especially concerned, because it effects confining pressure so that effects the strength. And this issue effects design of some experiments . For example, when design a triaxial test, distribution of confining stress due to the size of soil sample is always neglected, but when the confining stress is very low, this kind of difference due to soil sample size may not be negligible.
Continue reading “他们说你是去了月球。。。”Archaeological Study on Reinforced Soil for Hydraulic Engineering in Ancient China
杨柳烟含灞岸春，年年攀折为行人。
好风若借低枝便，莫遣青丝扫路尘。
李老师把文章的资料发给我的时候，我没想到翻译将花这么长的时间，这可能是迄今为止我译过最难的一篇。我从学生时代断断续续就做过各种各样的翻译，各种专业，各种内容，甚至做过一次会议的现场同声传译（这是我非常高兴能够有机会尝试的一次体验，坐在隔音的小隔间，戴着耳机，切换着麦克风的频道，非常特别的一次体验），但这篇翻译是我翻译耗时最长的一篇。
这是一篇很有意思的文章，第一次听到是在一次土工合成材料会上，李老师做了一个报告，当时在座的Fumio Tatsuoka (龍岡 文夫) 教授也非常感兴趣。
李老师的报告总是有一种不一样的风格，每次都能够把知识讲得非常有趣，又容易理解。这篇文章的切入点是良渚古城的考古、息壤以及土工合成材料加筋。
等到文章译好，然后发现这篇文章该往哪投呢，它不像一个普通的论文，理论模型，数值模拟等等，倒是很像李老师《岩坛漫话》的风格。
论文的翻译是困难的，试举几个例子：
Continue reading “Archaeological Study on Reinforced Soil for Hydraulic Engineering in Ancient China”2020诺贝尔化学奖之际
本来也是打算英文写的，但是考虑到后面这一大串都是英文，就改用中文写吧。
这个时候看到这个新闻，多少总还是会觉得wow！，虽然其实也和你没多大关系。很多时候科学家的故事，如果都能让你也觉得很值得思考，那么很可能你也是一个科学家，或者至少是热爱科学的。
上一次觉得诺贝尔化学奖有点联系的时候，还在2000年：The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2000 was awarded jointly to Alan J. Heeger, Alan G. MacDiarmid and Hideki Shirakawa “for the discovery and development of conductive polymers.”
link：The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2000 从发现到开始商业化，经过了约30年。
我相信很多人做出诺奖级别的贡献的时候，他们的目标自始至终可能都不是诺奖，而是对科学本身的热爱和对未知领域的好奇心。
Emmanuelle Charpentier在众多的发言场合，提到最多的就是curiosity。
I realized that being a research scientist would fit the many aspects of my personality — my curiosity, intellectual drive for knowledge, enjoyment of communicating knowledge to others and working as a team, and my desire to turn complex scientific discoveries into practical applications that would help society. I was excited about being a scientist.
若有时间，我会再写一篇。
Emmanuelle Charpentier Receives Aachen Engineering Award
07/09/2018
Copyright: Andreas Schmitter
Link: Emmanuelle Charpentier Receives Aachen Engineering Award
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Continue reading “2020诺贝尔化学奖之际”Join us
It is the first time that I put on a post to say “Hey! Join us, if you are interested in.”
We are doing amazing research here with incredible enthusiasm and broad interests.
There are tons of reasons that people choose to do research; it could be a hobby, or to make a living, or any reason you name it, but my favourite reason is always that you love it. If you love your job, then you will do it with passion and happiness. 996 is never a problem only if you love it. (Well, it doesn’t mean 996 in our team…I never advocate that. See the photo, people played badminton; and we should do it more later on.)
My interests include (but not limited to)
1. Impact of electricity on clay minerals
By applying electric voltage on clay minerals, we look at the variation of its mineral structure and engineering behaviours. This could be a scientific research on clay mineral level (chemical & micro level); it could also be linked to potential engineering application in the area of geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering.
2. Soil remediation and ground water treatment
This is a research area on removal of pollutants from contaminated soil or protection of ground water. This research topic can be linked to EK technique as well. And another possibility is to use Fe-rich clay minerals as redox materials for ground water treatment.
3. Dewatering and consolidation
This topic is about removal of water from very fine-grained soil, like sludge, slurry, clay, etc. These kinds of materials have very low hydraulic conductivity, but electro-osmosis can be an effective method for dewatering and consolidation of them. We are looking at the challenges of this EO technique in large scale of application.
4. Geosynthetics
We are interested in application of geosynthetics.
1) Reinforcement, which is a very popular application for decades and lots of people from academy and industry are doing it.
2) Filtration and drainage. This topic is related to dewatering and consolidation. One of the special issues that we are especially interested in is the clogging problem of geotextiles. There are lot of things to do, include mechanism of clogging, update of manufacturing and design code, invention of novel types of geotextiles.
3) One more thing about geosynthetics, which is special for our research is EKG. This novel material presents a new category of geosynthetic and I’ve been staying in this topic for over decade.
5. Unsaturated soil, constitutive model and numerical modelling
We are carrying out this research partially also because of EK technique. When applying EK technique, it is related to unsaturated soil and suction. Therefore, we’ve been developing completely new constitutive model and trying to apply it in suction measurement, EK design and also trying to develop code for numerical modelling and software for EK design.
6. Mining, tailing, liquefaction, etc.
More researches that are related to my basic interests previously mentioned are being explored, we will see more ideas and fantastic work coming up.
So…welcome to join us…
And also, any collaboration is welcome.
Looking forward to hearing from you
Yan-feng Zhuang (zhuang@tsinghua.edu.cn)