What do you do with nanocrystals that just can't relax (vibrationally)?
Check our our new paper in @angew_chem on lanthanide-doped potassium lead halide nanocrystals with ultra-low phonon energies and nonlinear, photon-avalanche-like emission: doi.org/10.1002/anie.2…
(1/n) 🧵 Why do we care about the energy/frequency of the phonons in nanocrystals? Phonon emission is one of the main nonradiative relaxation pathways for excited states in nanocrystals, esp. lanthanide-doped ones. Lower phonon E means exponentially less likely vibr. relaxation. (2/n)

Practicing a conference talk, defense, or job talk?
As the saying goes, "Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect."
Here are 10 #ProTips for practicing talks: 🧵 The short version:

1.Don't practice talks straight through. Target small chunks.
2.Incorporate feedback. Practice until you get it right
3.Make practice harder than the real thing
4.Practice transitions between slides/ideas

Quite a few people ask me about buying large automated systems and other high value equipment ($250k - $millions). Here's a thread with my top 10 tips for large equipment purchases: Here's the summary if you don't like reading:
1. Do a live demo
2. Talk to current users
3. Build relationships with vendors early. Find people you trust.
4. Don't try to make everyone happy.
5. Before talking to vendors, write an RFP w/ acceptance tests

One of the 1st things I did @molecularfndry after COVID shutdown was to look into telepresence robots, from @DoubleRobotics & @OhmniLabs. Basically iPads on wheels; via web browser, you roll up to someone in lab and talk! Who won the battle of the telepresence bots? Read on! We looked at the @DoubleRobotics Double 3 & @OhmniLabs Supercam (old name). We couldn't find any other reasonable competitors. All other options were, out of stock, DIY kits not fit for deployment, or expensive stuff for hospitals. (2/6)