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Scientists at Warwick University teamed up with reserachers at IBM to image a newly synthesised molecule called olympicene- C19H12 |
The molecule was synthesised by Anish Mistry and David Fox from the University of Warwick. The molecule was then passed on to a team at IBM Research in Zurich who imaged it using a carbon-monoxide tipped atomic force microscopy technique that can show up the structure and bonding in the molecule.
© IBM Research/University of Warwick
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Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak is one step closer!
American researchers from Towson University and University of Maryland have created and array of 25 000 individual cloaks. This array is the first of its kind. The results were published on the 25th of May in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s New Journal of Physics [1].
In our array, light is stopped at the boundary of each of the cloaks, meaning we observe the trapped rainbow at the edge of each cloak. This means we could do ‘spectroscopy on-a-chip’ and examine fluorescence at thousands of points all in one go.
Dr Vera Smolyaninova
References
[1] V N Smolyaninova et al 2012 New J. Phys. 14 053029
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The Institute of Physics (IOP) has announced the appointment of a new Chief Executive. Professor Paul Hardaker will take up his new post as Chief Executive of IOP on 3 September 2012.
I have now been a sessional tutor at the University of Brighton’s International College for one week. I have enjoyed the lecturing and workshops with the students. So far everything is going okay and I am sure with a bit more experience I will become an effective teacher.
At this point, any suggestions on how to be a great lecturer would be welcomed!
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My paper “Higher contact-like structures and supersymmetry” has now been accepted for publication in the Journal of Physics A. I will post details of as soon as I know. |
In the paper I reformulate N=1 supersymmetry in terms of the non-integral distribution spanned by the SUSY covariant derivatives and cast this in the langauge of a vector valued version of contact geometry.
A preprint can be found here.
An older blog entry can be found here.
I start my job as a sessional tutor at the University of Brighton’s International College on Monday 21st May. The job is lecturing foundation mathematics to overseas students. The level of mathematics is about that of UK A-levels.
Overseas students for whom English is not their first language do present some challenges. In my experience, the biggest issue is the use of words or phrases that just don’t arise in conversational English. Simple words and phrases that we take for granted can really throw international students, which in turn can diminish their confidence.
Many of the other issues are really no different to home students, though the intensity may be different. For example, all students get home sick, but this is amplified when in an alien culture.
I am looking forward to gaining more experience of lecturing and this will in fact be the first time I have actually delivered a course. Most of my previous experience has been in a more supportive role as a teaching assistant and a personal tutor.