Theoretical physicist Professor Peter Higgs has been presented with the 2011 Edinburgh Award. Previous winners of the prize, organised by the City of Edinburgh Council and nominated by the citizens of Edinburgh for their outstanding contribution to the city, include Sir Chris Hoy and JK Rowling.
A sculpture of Professor Higgs’ handprints, engraved in Caithness stone, has been installed on a flagstone in the City Chambers quadrangle alongside those of the previous Edinburgh Award recipients. Professor Higgs will also receive an engraved Loving Cup - a traditional two-handled drinking vessel that represents friendship.
"It is a great honour to receive this award from the city that I fell in love with and is now my adopted home." Professor Peter Higgs
Speaking at the Award, Professor Richard Kenway said: "Discovery of the Higgs boson would be the culmination of 20th century theoretical physics; its absence would mark the most massive deception ever perpetrated by Nature!"
In 1964, Professor Higgs developed his theory of the Higgs boson, an important ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics, which helps explain how objects have mass. Professor Higgs’s theory has formed part of the research being carried out at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. In 2011, scientists at CERN announced they had glimpsed the Higgs boson and hope to confirm whether it does or does not exist in 2012. Should Professor Higgs' theory be proven, it is widely predicted that he would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
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Even at the absolute zero of temperature, theory predicts that atoms still have kinetic energy causing them to jiggle about. On a universal scale this so-called "Zero Point Energy" far outweighs all other sources of energy, but extracting it is exceptionally difficult.
Researchers in the School's Institute for Condensed Matter and Complex Systems (ICMCS) have made a number of remarkable discoveries in high pressure lithium over the last few years, and a paper published this week in top Physics journal Physical Review Letters (108, 055501, 2012) explains the previously mysterious stability of the so-called oC88 high pressure phase.
Under 60GPa of pressure - comparable to that found deep in the Earth's mantle - lithium changes its crystal structure to a form called oC88. Previous calculations showed that oC88 requires more energy to form than could be supplied by squeezing, but Eugene Gregoryanz' group showed that the atoms in oC88 move at a much lower frequency than other allotropes of lithium (see figure). Careful calculation by a team led by Graeme Ackland showed that this means that oC88 contained very low zero-point energy, and so it is formed by extracting the zero-point energy from the low pressure lithium.
The ability of lithium to tap zero-point energy is unrelated to the antimatter storage properties of dilithium in Star Trek. This is because the former is true and the latter is made up.
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Panton Fellowships offer £8,000 to scientists who promote open data in science. Apply now!
Panton Fellowships can be held whilst you are working or studying, and should supplement your current funding. Fellowships last for one year. The scheme is designed to be flexible, and there is scope for Fellows to carry out a range of activities.
Fellows may wish to:
* Initiate discussion about the role and value of openness,
* Explore practical solutions for making data open
* Catalyse the scientific community and for push change.
Panton Fellowships are open to all, and are particularly suited to graduate students and early-stage career stage scientists. The scheme is overseen by a distinguished Advisory Board of scientists and open data advocates. To be eligible, applicants must have the relevant rights to work in the UK, and should reasonably expect to be working and/or studying in the UK until March 2013.
Applicants should send a CV and covering letter to jobs [at] okfn.org by 24th February.
See the Panton Principles website for full details.
Imagine if every person on the planet were able to carry out 250,000 calculations per second simultaneously. This is the combined capability of the next stage of development of two giant computers, HECToR and BlueGene/Q, based at the University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Computing Facility (ACF).
The computers can deliver complex computer simulations across a range of scientific disciplines and are funded by four of the UK Research Councils, EPSRC, STFC, NERC and BBSRC. Their increased computing capacity and performance will help UK researchers’ work in forecasting the impact of climate change, the fundamental structure of matter, fluctuations in ocean currents, projecting the spread of epidemics, designing new materials, the structure and evolution of the universe and developing new medicinal drugs.
Launching the new phases at an event jointly hosted by the University of Edinburgh and the UK Research Councils, Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, said: “E-infrastructure is fundamental to modern research and development. It helps our world-leading science base achieve breakthroughs across a range of important disciplines and helps industry design and manufacture new products.
“These impressive new supercomputers will drive growth and innovation. They will provide UK businesses and researchers with the technology they need to compete successfully on a global scale.”
Mr Willetts also presented a plaque to the winner of a schools art competition to produce a design for the front panels of the HECToR computer.
"We are delighted to host the next generation in supercomputing capability for researchers across the UK. HECToR and BlueGene/Q will each play a significant role in facilitating ground-breaking research across many areas of science, with tremendous benefits for society. We look forward to working with our partner organisations in delivering this computing capability and to seeing the contribution it will make." Professor Sir Timothy O'Shea, Principal, University of Edinburgh
Commenting on HECToR Phase 3, which has been funded by a £13.9 million grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), which manages the service, Professor David Delpy, Chief Executive, said: “High Performance Computing is vital to supporting the development of science, discovery and new commercial partnerships. As HPC becomes more powerful, and it is possible to model more complex problems in greater detail, the types of simulation that HECToR is capable of become an increasingly valuable tool.”
Professor John Womersley, Chief Executive Officer of STFC said: “Supercomputers are the essential, behind-the-scenes tools that enable modern science. Whether you are analysing climate data from a satellite, designing a new medicine or looking for the Higgs boson, access to high performance computers is vital. These new computers will undoubtedly facilitate breakthroughs across the scientific disciplines, and lead to additional economic and societal benefits for the UK.”
Also announced at the launch was the winner of a schools art competition to design a pictorial representation of the work carried out by HECToR. The winning picture has been placed on the front panels of the computer.
The winner, sixteen-year-old Lily Johnson, from Hethersett Old Hall School, Nr Norwich, said: “I entered the HECToR design competition at the suggestion of my chemistry teacher, Miss Mann. After reading about the capabilities of the supercomputer I wanted to represent these in my design.
“The rain, cloud and sun represent mapping weather patterns and climate change, the volcano the prediction of natural disasters, the syringe and tablets the computer’s application in medical advances, the leaf the advancing of understanding complex biological systems and the aeroplane the computer’s role in improving engineering of aircraft.
“I put these around a globe as the work of the computer has global benefits. All the pictures are coloured in binary code to show how the technology links them all together.
“I am very honoured that my design has been chosen for the computer, as its work will be influential in so many fields. It is an amazing next technological step in the important issues affecting our lives, such as climate change.”
Both the BlueGene/Q and HECToR facilities have approximately the same computational performance, 800 Teraflops (800 million million million million). HECToR has a memory of 90 Terabytes – equivalent to that of over 180,000 iPhones. It also has one Petabyte of disk space for storing data. If your iPhone had that much space it could hold 200 million tracks, and if you started listening to each one of them in 2012, you would still be listening in 3153.
The BlueGene/Q design achieves a very high concentration of computing power in a small space and is the most energy efficient supercomputer ever built. Using just the electricity it takes to power a light bulb it can perform the calculations of 100 laptops.
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Congratulations to the ROE astronomers who were honoured in the recent set of awards given out by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).
Dr Tom Kitching, a Fellow at the Institute for Astronomy, was given the award for postdoctoral researcher whose career has shown most promise. The United Kingdom Infrared Telescope Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) - which includes the School's Prof. Andy Lawrence and Dr Nigel Hambly - was given the RAS Group Award. The citations are below.
Winton Capital Award for Astronomy: Dr Tom Kitching
Dr Tom Kitching has been given the 2012 Winton Capital Award, which recognises a postdoctoral researcher who completed their PhD no more than 5 years previously and whose career has shown the most promising development.
Dr Kitching, who now holds a RAS postdoctoral fellowship, contributes at all levels to research into weak gravitational lensing, from the details of shape measurement of galaxies, through development of sophisticated analysis tools, to leadership roles in ESA's forthcoming Euclid space mission that will map dark matter and investigate dark energy.
As a student, he helped develop the new field of 3D weak lensing and, with its inventor Prof. Lance Miller, is the co-creator of an algorithm that measures the distortion of galaxy images. As a result of his particular expertise he was invited to join the leading ground-based lensing survey (CFHTLenS) and the leading space-based survey (COSMOS, using the Hubble Space Telescope).
RAS Group Award: UKIDSS
The United Kingdom Infrared Telescope Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) project has been awarded the RAS Group Award. The consortium behind the project began their work in 2005 and since that time has published more than 200 refereed papers. Significant science results from UKIDSS include the discovery of a quasar at a redshift of 7 (meaning that the light we detect from it left more than 13 billion years ago) and finding many examples of the new cool T-dwarf objects. Some of the latter are amongst the coolest astronomical objects known.
Two innovative professional development courses for educators involved in the design and delivery of science teaching at secondary level or early-years HE will be offered by the School from September 2012 as part of the University of Edinburgh’s Distance Education Initiative.
These Research-Informed Science Education (RISE) courses - ‘Research Based Instructional Strategies in the Science Classroom’ and ‘Technology Enhanced Learning in the Science Classroom’ - are Masters level courses that can form the basis of a Postgraduate Certificate in Science Education Research. The courses are endorsed by the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
The RISE courses are strongly aligned to the research activities of the Edinburgh Physics Education Research group (EdPER) and will appeal to teachers who have been away from formal study for some time and wish to undertake accredited CPD (continuing professional development) without taking extended leave from the classroom.
Further information
To find out more contact Crystal Lei, RISE course secretary:rise-info [at] ed.ac.uk
The SUPA Graduate School requests applications for Postdoctoral and Early Career Researcher exchanges with Europe, North America, China and India.
Applications should be made by completing the attached form either in PDF or MWord and submitting this to Valerie.evans [at] supa.ac.uk by 9am Monday 13th February 2012.
The main purpose of the exchanges is for the most able postgraduates and early career researchers working within SUPA to build experience of international collaboration with academia and/or industry. The exchange may build on existing, or establish new collaborations.
Each successful Postdoctoral or Early Career Researcher candidate may be the recipient of a single award only, up to a maximum value of £7,500 and each exchange must be for a minimum period of at least one month. The funding must not be used for attendance at conferences, training seminars and the like. Eligible costs are restricted to economy travel and subsistence at the agreed institutional rate. The costs of the research are not eligible.
Selection process
The SUPA Graduate School will be responsible for selecting the best Postdoctoral and Early Career Researcher candidates in an open competition from within SUPA which will be judged by the SUPA Graduate School Management Committee (GSMC).
Criteria for selection will include:
• evidence of the ability of the candidate (output, leadership);
• likely benefits to the research of the candidate (new skills, techniques likely to be acquired) as result of the exchange;
• likely benefits to the longer-term career of the Postgraduate or Early Career Researcher as result of the exchange;
• evidence of wider benefits to SUPA as a result of the exchange; and
• prospects of sustained collaboration as a result of the exchange.
Following the exchange, successful candidates agree to provide to the GSMC a report covering:
• the aims, objectives or themes that the exchange relates to;
• a brief scientific report (2 pages A4);
• a list of outputs (publications/other); and
• detailed costs involved.
The reports will be reviewed by the Scottish Funding Council.
Attachments
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 SUPA II Exchange form Postdocs.doc | 124.5 KB |
 SUPA_II_Exchange form.pdf | 286.07 KB |
The School of Physics & Astronomy is recruiting lecturers. Follow the links below to find out more.
Astronomers have mapped dark matter on the largest scale ever observed. The School's Dr Catherine Heymans and Associate Professor Ludovic Van Waerbeke of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, will present the results today to the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas. Their findings reveal a Universe comprising an intricate cosmic web of dark matter and galaxies spanning more than one billion light years.
An international team of researchers lead by Van Waerbeke and Heymans achieved their results by analysing images of about 10 million galaxies in four different regions of the sky. They studied the distortion of the light emitted from these galaxies, which is bent as it passes massive clumps of dark matter during its journey to Earth.
Their project - known as the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Lensing Survey (CFHTLenS) - uses data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey. This accumulated images over five years using the wide field imaging camera MegaCam, a 1 degree by 1 degree field-of-view, 340 Megapixel camera on the CFHT in Hawaii.
Galaxies included in the survey are typically six billion light years away. The light captured by the images used in the study was emitted when the Universe was six billion years old – roughly half the age it is today.
The team’s result has been suspected for a long time from studies based on computer simulations, but was difficult to verify owing to the invisible nature of dark matter. This is the first direct glimpse of dark matter on large scales showing the cosmic web in all directions.
“By analysing light from the distant Universe, we can learn about what it has travelled through on its journey to reach us. We hope that by mapping more dark matter than has been studied before, we are a step closer to understanding this material and its relationship with the galaxies in our Universe.”
Dr Catherine Heymans, School of Physics & Astronomy
Dr Thomas Kitching is the Cosmology Working Group coordinator, based in the School's Institute for Astronomy. "The dark matter map we have produced looks back over 75% of the age of the Universe, to a time when it was very different to today. By tracking the evolution of the Universe over cosmic time, the team at Edinburgh will investigate how dark energy has come to dominate the present day Universe.
"Over the next few months we will be using this data to map the evolution of the expansion of the Universe and learn about dark energy, which is causing the expansion of the Universe to accelerate. We will test theories of gravity itself to determine if Einstein's general relativity is correct or not. We will also use it to determine the properties of neutrinos, ghostly particles that interact with normal matter only very weakly."
The research was supported by the European Research Council, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre.
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Professor Emeritus Peter Higgs has been given the City of Edinburgh Council's 2011 Edinburgh Award, which pays tribute to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to the city.
Commenting on Prof. Higgs' achievements, Lord Provost George Grubb said: "His work with the University of Edinburgh has put this city on an international stage and as such he has undoubtedly proven to be a most deserved winner of one of Edinburgh's most prestigious civic awards."
Professor Higgs will be presented with an engraved quaich at a ceremony in early 2012. A cast of his handprints will be made, to be engraved - and immortalised - on a flagstone in the City Chambers quadrangle.