The School invites expressions of interest from potential applicants for the STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowships and the Royal Society University Research Fellowships. Both schemes provide five years' funding for outstanding researchers.
STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship
Applicants to the STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship must have a PhD and a minimum of five years' research experience from the start of the postgraduate programme leading to the award of a PhD. Holders of a permanent academic position are not eligible.
Royal Society University Research Fellowship
For the Royal Society University Research Fellowship, applicants must have between three and eight years of research experience since their PhD by the closing date of the round.
How to apply
Expressions of interest must include a draft project proposal and a CV. This should be submitted to the admin-researchandfinance [at] ph.ed.ac.uk (Research and Finance team) by Friday, 22nd August 2014.
Candidates submitting after this date cannot be considered.
One hundred high school students recently participated in a week of activities at the University of Edinburgh as part of a summer school organised by the Sutton Trust.
The Sutton Trust identifies and pilots programmes to help non-privileged children; undertakes independent and robust evaluations; and aims to influence Government education policy and education spending to improve educational opportunities for young people from low and middle income homes.
Twenty-four summer students followed the “physics stream” that was organised by researchers from the School of Physics & Astronomy. Each morning, students attended lectures that introduced some of the subjects that are taught at University while in the afternoon a series of workshops allowed them to explore these subjects in more detail.
Physics masterclass
Greig Cowan and Flavia Dias from the School's experimental particle physics group discussed the physics principles that are explored and tested at research laboratories such as CERN. The students were given the chance to analyse some of the data from the ATLAS experiment at CERN during a “physics masterclass”. They were challenged to look through the data to find the characteristic signature of the decay of the Higgs boson, the same particle that was discovered at CERN two years ago!
Complex systems
Richard Blythe introduced complex interacting systems and the chaotic behaviour they can exhibit. Armed only with dice and pieces of card, the students ran a Monte Carlo model of traders in an economy, and found that even when the rules treated all players equally, a few traders ended up very rich whilst rather more had no money at all. This illustrates the fundamental principle that a physical system is more likely to be in a state with low energy than one with high energy. In turn, this underpins our modern understanding of how structures arise in condensed matter physics.
The impact of supercomputers
David Henty presented an overview of what supercomputers are and their impact on the world. This was followed by a number of practical activities each supervised by a member of EPCC's staff. David showed the students a number of old supercomputer motherboards, indicating the many processors that were previously used to achieve a high performance. Eilidh Troup showed the potential complexity of programming these systems by using a numbered ball sorting algorithm - students were given balls to sort, each of them acting out the part of a different processor. Alistair Grant used a geoboard to show various aspects of networking. Finally Mario Antonioletti had a dinosaur-racing demo where students could configure a model of argentinosaurus, a 4-legged dinosaur. This application shows parallelism being harnessed by running the processing of the configured dinosaur behind the scenes in parallel.
The students were also engaged in the preparation of a poster to present on the last day of the school. All the physics groups were very excited to share their experience with the other participants of the school, which included students interested in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from informatics to philosophy.
Find out more
The success of this event bodes well for future participation of the School with the Sutton Trust. More information can be found here:
www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/student-recruitment/widening-participation/projects/stss
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Researchers from the School's experimental particle physics group recently organised the 15th International Conference on B-Physics at Frontier Machines (Beauty 2014)
The event was held at the Playfair Library at the University of Edinburgh and supported by the Higgs Centre. The Beauty 2014 conference reviewed results in the field of B-physics and CP-violation, and explored the physics potential of existing and upcoming B-physics experiments at new particle accelerator facilities. The CERN-based LHCb experiment (which comprises a strong Edinburgh group) presented its latest results on the observation of a spin-3 meson, the first time such an object has been observed.
A live video link-up with CERN took place on Thursday, with a dedicated discussion about the physics results being presented in Edinburgh. This gave the general public a chance to hear directly from the scientists making the measurements and to ask them questions. You can watch an online recording of the broadcast.
"Two main results were presented, both from the LHCb experiment that we work on in Edinburgh. The first was the first observation of a heavy flavored spin-3 particle, observed in the decay of a B_s meson. In quantum mechanics, spin is an intrinsic form of angular momentum carried by the particle, just like all particles also have a mass. This is the first time that any spin-3 particle has been seen to be produced in B meson decays and shows the power of the LHCb data to perform spectroscopy of heavy flavoured mesons." Dr Greig Cowan, Particle Physics Experiment group.
Confirmation of an exotic resonance composed of 4 quarks was also presented at the conference.
In addition to the LHCb results, the ATLAS, CMS, Belle, BaBar, CDF and D0 experiments also showed their latest measurements, demonstrating the great strength in the field as we work together to understand the fundamental theories of the Universe. Theoretical physicists helped to shed further light on recent interesting and unexpected results by showing how possible new physics theories could accommodate these anomalies. In addition, local PhD students were given the chance to present their own work during a poster session.
“I really enjoyed the conference as it allowed me to get a good overview of many different aspects of my subject. Getting the chance to present my own research to the community, in the form of a poster and short presentation, was excellent experience for thinking about how best to communicate my thesis subject. This will be very useful in the future!" Adam Morris, PhD student, Particle Physics Experiment group
The conference not only allowed the scientists to discuss the latest results, but also gave them the opportunity to socialise together and get to explore Edinburgh, Scottish culture (including whisky) and the surrounding area. You can see the Twitter posts and photos taken during the week here: https://twitter.com/hashtag/beauty2014?src=hash
"Beauty 2014 was a huge success with lots of new results presented. We have received lots of very positive feedback from participants who enjoyed very much the conference which took place in the historic Playfair Library. This venue allowed for easy interactions between scientists with lots of excellent discussion after talks, but also during coffee and lunches. " Prof. Franz Muheim, Particle Physics Experiment group, who chaired the local organising committee.
About LHCb
LHCb is an experiment set up to explore what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter to survive and build the Universe we inhabit today
Fourteen billion years ago, the Universe began with a bang. Crammed within an infinitely small space, energy coalesced to form equal quantities of matter and antimatter. But as the Universe cooled and expanded, its composition changed. Just one second after the Big Bang, antimatter had all but disappeared, leaving matter to form everything that we see around us — from the stars and galaxies, to the Earth and all life that it supports.
The conference ran from 14th‑18th July 2014 at the Playfair Library in Edinburgh.
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Researchers from the School's Particle Physics groups took part in "The Higgs Boson and Beyond" exhibit at the Royal Society Exhibition in London in July.
Fifteen thousand people visited the week-long Summer Science Exhibition, including the general public and school groups as well as evening soirees with Royal Society Fellows and VIPs. The School's Particle Physics Experiment group was heavily involved in the organisation of the exhibition this year.
The exhibit showed how recent measurements at the ATLAS and CMS experiments of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) earned the 2013 Nobel prize for Physics for Peter Higgs and Francois Englert. Demonstrations also explained how the Higgs Boson gives clues to new physics that lies beyond what we already know. This was done through various activities commissioned especially for the exhibit, that allowed visitors to play with (and make) knitted fundamental particles, measure the Higgs mass as 70s physicists would have done, play Spinball to learn about the Higgs spin, and to win prizes by finding rare-decays of the Higgs Boson (in pin-badge form) and much much more.
"It was a great honour to be a part of the Summer Science Higgs boson exhibition! I found it extremely rewarding to see understanding dawn in the eyes of curious children and take part in many fruitful discussions with interested visitors.
"As a scientist, communicating with the public helps remind me of the 'big picture' of the CERN laboratory and its experiments, and I am privileged in turn to grow an excitement for particle physics outside the scientific community." Flavia Dias, Particle Physics Experiment group, School of Physics
Wahid Bhimji co-led the overall exhibition planning, bringing together activities from all 18 particle physics groups in the UK. Flavia Dias led on the online presence, including the popular Twitter feed and Q&A. As well as Flavia and Wahid, Edinburgh group members Victoria Martin and Ben Wynne also demonstrated at the exhibit.
Further information
RSE event website: Summer Science: Higgs Boson
The Higgs Boson and Beyond booklet
The Higgs Boson and Beyond website
The Higgs Boson and Beyond video
The exhibit and booklet were co-sponsored by the University of Edinburgh and the Higgs Centre, together with the other UK universities involved and STFC.
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Dr Victoria Martin of the School's Particle Physics Experiment group has joined the Young Academy of Scotland, the Royal Society of Scotland's mutli-disciplinary forum.
She joins the School's six other members: Cait McPhee, Rosalind Allen, Duncan Forgan, Tiffany Wood, Job Thijssen, and Catherine Heymans.
"I am delighted to be appointed to the Young Academy of Scotland. I look forward to working with fellow young leaders from around Scotland on diverse issues such as research and education policy, engagement with the media and the implications of constitutional reform." Victoria Martin
The Young Academy of Scotland
The RSE Young Academy of Scotland fosters interdisciplinary activities among emerging leaders from the disciplines of science and humanities, the professions, the arts, business and civil society. Established by the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2011, the Young Academy of Scotland provides a platform for able and innovative young entrepreneurs, professionals and academics to develop a coherent and influential voice, and to address the most challenging issues facing society in Scotland and beyond.
The Young Academy provides a means of reaching beyond the professional environments in which members work, thus contributing to policy and practice in all areas. It provides an opportunity for its members to interact across disciplines and professions with decision makers, opinion formers and experts, business leaders, funding bodies, national institutions, the public and the media within Scotland, the UK and internationally.
The Young Academy of Scotland is part of a growing international movement in which national academies are establishing young academies across Europe and beyond.
The School of Physics & Astronomy has made a short film called Breaking Waves to coincide with the opening of the new Flowave tank at the University.
Theoretical research into the generation of three-dimensional random seas was carried out in the School (then the Department of Physics) in the early 1980s and at about the same time the School also developed new optical techniques for the measurement of complex water waves.
The film explains the fundamentals of how waves are generated in the real sea and reproduced in a wave tank. It also gives a whistle-stop tour of some of the new wave energy devices under development in Scotland including, for example, new footage taken inside Pelamis on the island of Hoy in Orkney.
Breaking Waves will first be shown in Satrosphere Science Centre in Aberdeen during the summer. For more details contact c.a.greated [at] ed.ac.uk (Clive Greated).
Flowave
The FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility is a world-unique facility for testing and de-risking marine energy technologies and projects.
The tank and equipment
The heart of FloWave is a 30m circular concrete basin containing the 25m diameter wave and current tank. The 5m deep tank contains 2.4 million litres of fresh water and is circumferentially ringed by 168 absorbing wave makers. Additionally, twenty-eight submerged flow-drive units can simultaneously and independently drive current across the tank in any relative direction, with maximum current velocities of 1.6 metres per second. A rising tank floor and overhead crane enable quick and easy installation of individual devices, or arrays of wave or tidal current generators.
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The MASE (Mars Analogues for Space Exploration) research project based within the UK Centre for Astrobiology will assess the habitability of Mars by studying how life survives in extreme environments on Earth. Dr Petra Schwendner, who plays a major role in the scientific co-ordination of MASE, explains the work of the project.
I have a strong background in the enrichment of anaerobic microorganisms with a focus on astrobiology. Over the next 3 years I will be using a diverse set of different present-day Earth-Mars analogue environments to help further the assessment of the habitability of Mars.
Detecting life of Mars, and investigating whether it was ever there, depends on knowledge of whether the combined environmental stresses experienced on Mars are compatible with life and whether a record of that life could ever be detected. Therefore, I will obtain samples from sites including the cold sulphidic springs of the Sippenauer Moor and Islinger Muehlbach in Germany, subsurface environments at 1.1 km depth in the Boulby salt mine (UK), permafrost in Canada and Russia, acidic cold lakes in Iceland, and the Rio Tinto sediments in Spain.
Each of these environments is characterized by exhibiting environmental extremes like low temperature, aridity, high salinity, acidity and low nutrient availability. Once I have obtained samples, I will try to isolate and characterize microorganisms that can thrive under anaerobic conditions. Future goals are to study their responses to realistic combined environmental stresses that might have been experienced in habitable environments on Mars and their potential for fossilisation on Mars and their detectability.
l am looking forward to being part of this promising collaborative research project involving partners from across Europe. To find out more, see our MASE website.
The University of Edinburgh is the scientific coordinator of MASE. This 2.5million euro project is supported by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities.
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![Professors Peter Higgs and Francoise Englert during a press conference ahead of the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm. [© Victoria Henriksson/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences]](https://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/legacy/Higgs%20Englert%202013.jpg)
Celebrated Nobel laureates Professors Peter Higgs and Francois Englert are to receive honorary degrees at a ceremony in Edinburgh this weekend.
Professor Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh, and Professor Englert, of Université Libre de Bruxelles, are to receive doctorates in science from one another’s institutions, at a graduation ceremony in the University of Edinburgh’s McEwan Hall.
Professors Higgs and Englert won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013 for independently discovering a mechanism that enables elementary particles to acquire mass.
The new subatomic particle predicted by the mechanism, the Brout-Englert-Higgs boson, was confirmed to exist in 2012 following ground-breaking experiments at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva.
At the event, Professor Sir Tom Kibble from Imperial College London, who also developed the theory of the mechanism, will receive a Royal Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director-General of CERN, will be awarded an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh.
At the ceremony, Professor Higgs will be awarded the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh by the Lord Provost, the Rt Hon Donald Wilson.
All the sky – all the time: UK astronomers debate involvement in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
Astronomers will discuss the case for UK involvement in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope project (LSST) on Monday 23 June at the National Astronomy Meeting in Portsmouth. The LSST will be sited at Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes and will have a primary mirror 8.4 metres in diameter, making it one of the largest single telescopes in the world, as well as the world’s largest digital camera, comprising 3.2 billion pixels. It will achieve first light in 2020 and its main sky survey will begin in 2022.
Uniquely, the LSST will be able to see a large patch of sky, 50 times the area of the full Moon, in each snapshot. Also it will move quickly, taking more than 800 images each night and photographing the entire southern sky twice each week.
The greatest movie ever made?
A powerful data system will compare new images with previous ones to detect changes in brightness and position of all the objects detected. As just one example, this could be used to detect and track potentially hazardous asteroids that might impact the Earth and cause significant damage. Billions of galaxies, stars and solar system objects will be seen for the first time and monitored over 10 years. Ultimately, the goal is to record the greatest movie ever made.
LSST is a partnership between public and private organizations and is led by the US. The unique scientific opportunities presented by LSST have led to the formation of a consortium of astronomers from more than 30 UK universities to seek funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council to support UK participation in the project.
The LSST:UK Project Scientist, Sarah Bridle from the University of Manchester, said, “Every night LSST will provide millions of alerts signalling objects that have changed on the sky. We want to compare these to earlier observations and other data including that from the Square Kilometer Array, to find out what they are – from exotic superluminous supernovae to colliding asteroids. Over the whole of the next decade, LSST will also measure the approximate distances to billions of galaxies, which will allow us to learn the nature of the mysterious dark energy that seems to be making the Universe expand faster and faster."
Steve Kahn, the LSST Director added, "I am delighted that the UK is seriously considering participation in LSST. The UK's traditional strength in survey astronomy and the pioneering work done through the Zooniverse project to engage the public make it a natural partner for us. We would greatly value the contribution that the UK astronomy community would bring to enable the success of LSST."
"LSST offers tremendous opportunities for the training of young researchers in the computational skills needed to meet the 'Big Data' challenges prevalent in both public and private sectors today. LSST is already driving research into the management and manipulation of multi-Petabyte datasets in the US and we are sure that our involvement in the project will stimulate similar developments in academia and industry in the UK." The LSST:UK Project Leader, Bob Mann, Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh
Science themes
The science themes of the LSST encompass astronomy, physics, chemistry, earth science, space science, mathematics, technology and computing, and the discoveries made by the LSST will be used to construct educational materials that will be freely available to schools and the public. Andrew Norton from the Open University, the LSST:UK Education and Public Outreach Coordinator, said, "The LSST will allow us to see the night sky changing in front of our eyes and everyone can get involved to understand how the Universe works. The LSST will really show us what a dynamic place the Universe is."
Citizen science
The LSST will provide unprecedented access to data, allowing for new kinds of citizen science and discovery. In recent years, the Zooniverse project has pioneered citizen science investigations of data in astronomy, enabling more than one million members of the public to explore data in projects such as Galaxy Zoo and Planet Hunters. The Zooniverse's Robert Simpson, the LSST:UK Public Data Coordinator from Oxford University, noted, "The citizen science and amateur astronomy communities around the UK, and the world, will be able to access the amazing data that comes out of the LSST. The potential for discovery will be on a scale we haven't seen before."
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
The LSST will be sited at Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes at an altitude of 2715m. The primary mirror diameter is 8.4m, making it one of the largest single telescopes in the world. It also contains secondary and tertiary mirrors with diameters of 3.4m and 5.2m respectively. It will contain the world’s largest digital camera, comprising 3.2 billion pixels (3200 Mpix) in a circular array of 189 detectors. The size of the camera detector is 63cm across. It will generate 30 Terabytes (30,000 Gb) of data every night.
It will achieve first light in 2020 and its main sky survey will begin in 2022. The scale of the technical challenges involved in storing and analyzing LSST’s data are daunting, and researchers are already starting work in earnest on the project.
Learn more at www.lsst.org.
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The Edinburgh nuclear physics group has led new research indicating the surface of heavy atomic nuclei comprises a thin "skin" of neutrons, having an average (root mean square) radius around 0.15 millionths of a nanometre larger than that of the protons. A paper co-authored by the School's Prof. Dan Watts has been published as an Editor's Suggestion and features in the commentary section of the current issue of Physical Review Letters.
Dan explains the background to the paper:
"The experiment provides the first measurement of the neutron skin using an electromagnetic probe. This allows a new level of precision in the determination of neutron skin properties and has different systematic errors to other attempts. The neutrons in the nuclear surface were measured to have a more diffuse distribution than the protons. The new results discriminate between nuclear theories in common use but also provide new constraints on how nuclear matter behaves as it is compressed. This information guides the latest theories of neutron stars affecting the predicted star radius for a given mass, possible star cooling mechanisms and gravitational wave emission. The neutron skin is like a mini laboratory for neutron star physics!"
The initial data analysis was carried out by Claire Tarbert who now works as a medical physicist, developing new diagnostic devices for the UK National Health Service.
"This paper arose out of a project I worked on with Dan Watts that formed the basis of my PhD thesis. I’m really pleased to see it published, its been a great project to be a part of.
"I now work for the NHS as a medical physicist. My current role involves collaborating with clinicians, other physicists, and engineers to develop new medical devices (either pieces of software or hardware) mainly for ophthalmic applications. While my knowledge of neutron skins doesn’t come up too often in this job, I find that I use the other skills that I developed during my nuclear physics PhD on an almost daily basis. Through developing hardware for nuclear physics experiments, performing Monte Carlo simulations and data analysis, I gained programming skills and an understanding of electronic and mechanical engineering. That experience, together with the scientific writing skills I picked up as I put together my thesis, I now find invaluable." Claire Tarbert, NHS Medical Physicist
Neutron skin of 208Pb from coherent pion photoproduction: C.M. Tarbert, D.P. Watts, D.I. Glazier et al