Monthly Archives: October 2012

Astronomy, General, Physics

Climate change skeptics prominent in the US and UK media

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Earth

Earth as seen from Apollo 17.

According to some new research [1], climate skeptics are given a prominent voice in the US and UK media. James Painter (University of Oxford) and Teresa Ashe (University of London) looked at how climate skepticism manifested itself in the print media of the US, UK, Brazil, China, India and France during a 3-month period.

The period included ‘Climategate’ in 2009/10 and a second period which covered the IPCC’s fourth assessment report in 2007.

The UK media

In the UK, the Guardian/Observer ran 14 opinion pieces containing skeptical points of view during the two periods. All of which were countered by mainstream environmental scientists. The Telegraphs ran 34 opinion pieces, over half of which were not contested.

Global warming?

The skeptics that question whether global temperatures are warming at all appear almost exclusively in the UK and US newspapers. The rest of the world seems less likely to print opinions denying global warming.

References

[1] James Painter and Teresa Ashe 2012 Environ. Res. Lett. 7 044005

Links

IOP NEWS

Environmental Research Letters

General

UK universities fall in the world rankings

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Ten UK universities are in the top 100 of the Times Higher Education World Rankings for 2012-13. This should be compared with 12 for 2011-2012 and 14 in 2010-11.

oxford

Not including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College and University College London, several top UK universities have slipped down the rankings.

Universities I know well

Manchester this year is ranked 49.

Sussex fell from 99th to 110th loosing its top 100 status.

World top 20

  • California Institute of Technology
  • Oxford (joint 2nd)
  • Stanford (joint 2nd)
  • Harvard
  • MIT
  • Princeton
  • Cambridge
  • Imperial College
  • California, Berkeley
  • Chicago
  • Yale
  • ETH Zurich
  • California, Los Angeles
  • Columbia
  • Pennsylvania
  • Johns Hopkins
  • UCL
  • Cornell
  • Northwestern
  • Michigan

Source: Times Higher Education

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BBC News

General, Physics

Brian Cox awarded IOP president's medal

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Prof. Brian Cox was awarded the IOP present’s medal for his services in promoting science to a general audience and inspiring the next generation of physicists. Prof. Cox, from the University of Manchester, received the award on the 3rd October at the IOP awards dinner in London.

cox

Image by Paul Clarke

Brian Cox has also been made an honorary fellow of the British Science Association.

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Interactions October 2012

General, General Mathematics

Grisha Perelman in Playboy

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I HAD NEVER BEEN ON A STAKEOUT, but I knew how it was done. I took a book. I brought a few sandwiches. I flipped on the radio and listened to the traffic report in Russian. That kept me awake as I waited for the mathematician.

Brett Forest in Playboy July-August 2012 issue.

perelman

Perelman in August 2006 was awarded the Fields Medal for “his contributions to geometry and his revolutionary insights into the analytical and geometric structure of the Ricci flow.” He turned down the medal and prize.

Then on 18 March 2010, it was announced that he had met the criteria to receive the first Clay Millennium Prize for resolution of the Poincaré conjecture. Again he turned this down.

Perelman clearly shuns publicity…

Grigori Perelman is one of the greatest mathematicians of our time, a Russian genius who solved the Poincaré Conjecture, which plagued the brightest minds for a century. At the height of his fame, he refused a million-dollar award for his work. Then he disappeared. Our writer hunts him down on the streets of St. Petersburg.

Playboy

Links

Shattered Genius by Brett Forest

General, General Mathematics

Graph theorist given "genius award"

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pic

Maria Chudnovsky awarded a “genius award” under the MacArthur Fellows Program this year.

She mathematician who investigates the fundamental principles of graph theory. Her contributions to graph theory include a proof of the strong perfect graph theorem characterizing perfect graphs as being exactly the graphs with no odd induced cycles or their complements.

Although her research is highly abstract, she is laying the conceptual foundations for deepening the connections between graph theory and other major branches of mathematics, such as linear programming, geometry, and complexity theory.

The MacArthur Foundation announcement

She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Columbia University.

Links

McArthur Foundation

Chudnovsky’s homepage at Columbia University

General, Physics

Girls not taking up physics

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Image: ISTOCKPHOTO/CIMMERIAN

Girls are under represented in physics post-16, despite about equal success between genders in GCSE physics and science. For the last 20 years, only 20% of physics A-level students have been girls. Have a look at the recent numbers below..

student numbers

Taken from Trends in physics education

Straight from the IOP report It’s Different for Girls: The influence of schools

  • 49% of maintained co-ed schools sent no girls on to take A-level physics in 2011. The figure for all secondary schools is 46%
  • Girls were almost two and a half times more likely to go on to do A-level physics if they came from a girls’ school rather than a co-ed school (for all types of maintained schools in England)
  • Twice the percentage of girls who went on to do A-level physics came from a school with a sixth form, compared to schools that only teach up to age 16 (for co-ed maintained schools in England)
  • For maintained schools in England, the positive effect of single-sex education on girls’ choice of physics post-16 is not replicated in the other sciences

Physics is a subject that opens doors to exciting higher education and career opportunities. This research shows that half of England’s co-ed comprehensives are keeping these doors firmly shut to girls.

Professor Sir Peter Knight, President of IOP

Links

Girls are being left behind (IOP News)

General, General Mathematics

Artificial snow flakes

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David Griffeath (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Janko Gravner (University of California, Davis) have a computer model based on diffusion-limited aggregation that can simulate snowflakes. Their images look very real and demonstrate the wide variety of snowflakes found in nature.

Below are some of their snowflakes:

model1

model2

model6

model13

A PDF slideshow of 40 such snowflakes can be found here.

Links

Gravner-Griffeath Snowfakes

AMS Mathematical Imagery

General

A shortage of engineering graduates?

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100,000 Stem graduates are needed a year just to maintain the status quo, according to a report by The Royal Academy of Engineering.

Engineering firms are crying out for engineers.

Professor Matthew Harrison Royal Academy of Engineering

In the UK something like 23,000 engineers are graduating every year. Apparently that is not enough and UK firms are already recruiting experts from abroad.

Really?

But, is this not contradictory to other reports of STEM students having to take lower skilled jobs? For Example, Judith Burns (BBC) wrote about graduates in general back in March, see here.

More than a third of recent graduates were in non-graduate jobs at the end of 2011 – up from about a quarter in 2001.

Judith Burns (BBC)

Katherine Sellgren (BBC), in September wrote about Engineering graduates specifically, see here.

Nearly a quarter of UK engineering graduates are working in non-graduate jobs or unskilled work such as waiting and shop work, a report suggests.

Katherine Sellgren (BBC)

Now I am confused

So, what is the problem here? How can we have a situation where UK companies are having to recruit from abroad when we have a quarter of UK engineering graduates are working in non-graduate jobs?

The reason?

The Lords Science and Technology Committee (opens a PDF) called for immediate action to boost student numbers in science, technology, engineering and maths at undergraduate and postgraduate level. In the same report, it was stated that many graduates do not have the skills need by industry.

In reality the quality of the Stem graduates coming out of universities does not meet the requirements of industry and in fact is ultimately not even likely to meet the requirements of academia.

Lord Willis

In particular, around 70% of biology undergraduates, 38% of chemistry and economics undergraduates and 10% of engineering students did not have A-level maths.

Link

BBC NEWS