Private investor, physicist | Trying to understand the world through science, economics and history
I used to have a colleague that, like me, really enjoyed a good friendly-minded argument. It could be about something that could easily be googled and checked for the right answer (which usually was how that kind of argument ended) or a more open questions like What is the definition of a democratic country? or … Continue reading Argue to win or to learn
In my previous post I wrote about the basic principles for responsible investing in the share market: how to diverse the investments and lower the risks. In this post I will try to give give my thoughts about the common questions when to buy and sell shares, which I think is really a question about … Continue reading Basic portfolio management
Dealing with very large or very small can easily be confusing and it can be hard to appreciate e.g. how much larger an (american) billion is than a million. One way is to think in time: One million seconds (1e6 s) equals about 11.6 days, whereas one billion seconds (1e9 s) equals just over 31 … Continue reading Very large and very small numbers
The Price per Earnings ratio or P/E value gives a rough indication of how highly a share of a certain company is priced compared wot other companies. The P/E value basically tells you how much you will have to pay to own a certain share of the earnings of the company; earnings that in some … Continue reading Company valuation: the price/earnings ratio
In short, if you are unsure how to start investing, invest regularly over time in one or two index funds with low fees. My background I did my first small investments in some mutual fund and shares 1999 and have been following the financial markets ever since. I have pursued an academic career as a … Continue reading Basic principles for investing on the share market
A small asperity on a tungsten surface under a high electric field (red means high fields, blue means low fields). Due to the field, the atoms will migrate towards the points with higher fields and the asperity will grow into a nanotip. In a recent paper, accepted for publication in Nanotechnology, we describe a recent … Continue reading How nanotips may grow in electric fields
In a recently published paper, we describe a new parameter set for tungsten 
surfaces that should be able to simulate long-term evolutions of arbitrarily rough tungsten surfaces and nanoscale structures such as e.g. clusters, nanotips or maybe nanowires.
A long time ago, I bought a midi controller keyboard (a Cakewalk A-500S) as I wanted a small piano, but did not have space for an actual one. A midi controller does not produce any sound of its own. Instead you are supposed to connect it to a computer with a hardware that can interpret … Continue reading Using a midi controller with Ubuntu
Our paper, describing how the migration of metal surface atoms are affected by applied electric fields, has now become published by Physical Review B. We show that a field gradient may create a biased atom migration towards stronger fields. This effect comes as an applied field will affect the surface charge distribution and in particular … Continue reading How atoms move in electric fields
Since Google+ now has disappeared, I will have to figure out a new way to communicate with the world. Twitter has too short format for any longer arguments, but is rather a place to make announcements or make short comments. Facebook gives little control over how my content is shown or to whom it is … Continue reading Back to basics
Ville Jansson, PhD 