October 19, 2010

Science Cuts: One Day Left

The results of the Comprehensive Spending Review are being announced tomorrow and the feeling in the astrophysics community is increasingly pessimistic about the size of the cuts to research funding. With one day to go until the broad outline of the cuts is given, rumours are running wild that STFC will have to cut major programmes, exit from international collaborations and in the worst case scenario start to claw back grants which have already been awarded.

October 12, 2010

Inspire Beta: New Interface to SPIRES database

A colleague mentioned today that the front page of the venerable SPIRES database of High Energy Physics papers is now promoting the new Inspire interface which was announced a few years ago.

The website for the current beta phase of the project is http://inspirebeta.net.

It is unclear to me whether “Beta” is part of the site name, as suggested by the URL and the text on the INSPIRE page, or whether this is just the beta phase of the INSPIRE project as the SPIRES homepage seems to imply. It would certainly be an odd decision to use a different URL for the beta phase and force everyone to change bookmarks, references in blogs, literature etc., once the beta phase is over.

These are quick first impressions because I haven’t had much time to use the new service. First off it is fast. Very fast. So fast that when searching for my name INSPIRE claims that the “Search took 0.00 seconds”. It feels almost instantaneous. This might be because of a light load before the hordes using SPIRES are switched over. It is certainly an improvement on the interminable and often futile stretches of time needed with the SPIRES engine.

October 11, 2010

Scientists on the march

On Saturday many bemused tourists wandering around Westminster were treated to the unusual sight of scientists roaming free from their offices and labs to gather in protest at the government’s planned cuts to research funding. The rally was organised by Science is Vital who are also organising a petition and lobby of MPs which I talked about last week. There was a great turnout at the rally with some very inventive banners and placards.

September 30, 2010

Science is Vital

As a practising scientist you might expect me to believe that Science is Vital. “He would say that wouldn’t he,” you might say. Objectively speaking though, science research has a large impact on the wealth and success of a country. Even during these times of austerity, most developed countries are investing in science research, anticipating the benefits that a research led economy has historically provided. In contrast to this approach the UK coalition government is poised to announce the largest cuts in science funding in a generation.

September 8, 2010

Durham UK Cosmo meeting

Durham University, and in particular the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology hosted the annual two-day UK Cosmology meeting this year. There were lots of very interesting talks, and I hope to give a flavour of some of the issues that were mentioned over the course of the meeting. The list of participants and the programme outline are on the Durham website, however I do not expect the slides of the talks to be uploaded except perhaps by individual speakers.

August 19, 2010

ArXiv app for Android

I don’t regularly look up new papers on my phone, preferring the ease of checking them on my desktop at work. However when travelling or attending a conference it can be very handy to be able to quickly pull up some paper you half remember in the middle of a conversation.

As an Android user for a while now, the options were previously limited to navigating to the arxiv website which doesn’t really scale well onto a phone screen, and manually searching for the right paper, or scanning the new list. For a while there has been an iPhone app called arXivew which listed the latest papers and allowed you to easily download and view the one you wanted.

Now, there is an Android app to compete.

July 6, 2010

Thesis now online

I passed my viva examination a few months ago, and after very helpful suggestions from my two examiners I submitted the final version of my PhD thesis to the QMUL authorities a month ago. The paperwork all went through so I have now completely finished my doctoral training. All that remains to be done is the celebratory donning of a floppy cloth cap and scarlet robes at the graduation ceremony in a few weeks.

April 1, 2010

Simon Singh wins appeal

Congratulations and well done to Simon Singh who today won his appeal for the right to use a “fair comment” defence in his case against the British Chiropractic Association. Jack of Kent is going to give his analysis of the ruling over the weekend, starting here. This is only one case however and the need for reform of the libel laws is still as pressing as ever. Jack Straw has outlined Labour’s plans for reform if they win the election.

March 25, 2010

Customising Beamer Presentations

Someone asked me how I achieved the effects on my slides in the talk I gave at QMUL, so having written them an email outlining all the customisations I usually make, I thought the subject might be worthy of a blogpost. I use the Beamer package for LaTeX which is a great way to include mathematics in your slides, and is pretty straightforward to use if you are proficient with LaTeX.

March 25, 2010

Relativity and Cosmology Seminar

Yesterday I gave my first seminar as a postdoc in the regular Relativity and Cosmology series at QMUL. People seemed to engage with the material and there were quite a few questions at the end. The slides for the talk are available as a pdf or through the embedded widget below. My style for talks is heavily skewed towards minimalist slides with lots of verbal explanation so without having me beside you to guide you through them they might be hard to understand.