Hamish Currie had his steel toe-capped boot grabbed by a 7ft porbeagle shark after it was hauled aboard the board by the skipper. The shark caught off Islay in the Inner Hebrides.
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Category Archives: General
34,969 the number of the vampire
London Metropolitan University students may be deportated
The UK Border Agency (UKBA) says student attendance at London Metropolitan University has not been monitored and that many have no right to be here. The university will no longer be allowed to authorise visas.
Many non-EU students may now be thrown out of the country.
These are problems with 1 university, not the whole sector. British universities are among the best in the world – and Britain remains a top-class destination for top-class international students.
UKBA spokesperson
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Stephen Hawking at the paralympics
Professor Stephen Hawking will be narrating the opening ceremony of the paralympics in London. Prof Hawking will act as a guide to Miranda, a character from William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Prospero, another character from the play will be played by Sir Ian McKellen.
Hawking on the “Vomit Comet” in 2007.
“You will be taken on the most exquisite journey of discovery inspired by the wonder of science. Both Hawking and McKellen in their narrative talk about what we all need to remember: don’t just look down at your feet, look at the stars, be curious.”
Jenny Sealey
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Neil Armstrong dies
The first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong has died at the age of 82. He set foot on the Moon on the 20th July 1969, making his famous “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” speech.
He died due to complications from heart surgery he had earlier this month.
“As we enter this next era of space exploration, we do so standing on the shoulders of Neil Armstrong. We mourn the passing of a friend, fellow astronaut and true American hero.”
NASA Administrator Statement
Our thought are with his family.
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Drop in university applicants from England
The Independent Commission on Fees has says there has been “a clear drop” in English students applying, compared with those from the rest of the UK.
UCAS in June, showed applications from people in England were down 10% on the same time last year. In Wales, the drop was 2.9%, Northern Ireland 4.5% and Scotland 2.1%
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The Dirac Medal awared for topological insulators
Duncan Haldane (Princeton),Charles Kane (Pennsylvania) and Shoucheng Zhang (Stanford) have won this year’s Dirac medal from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste for their work on topological insulators.
Shoucheng Zhang, Duncan Haldane and Charles Kane.
Topological Insulators
Topological insulators are materials that act as insulators in their bulk, but allow current to flow on their surfaces. The important thing is that these surface states are topologically protected: these states exist due to “topological reasons” and stable against imperfections in the material.
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Fundamental Physics Prize for Ashoke Sen
Ashoke Sen has won the $3m (£1.9m) Fundamental Physics Prize, the largest science award. Ashoke Sen is a rather reclusive Indian particle physicist working from at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute in Allahabad.
Sen is probably best known for the Sen conjecture; in string theory, tachyonic states imply an instability of the D-brane to which the (open) string is attached [2]. This means that the system decays to a stable set of closed strings or D-branes. The end product of this spontaneous decay is known as a tachyon condensate.
These tachyon condensates were a very active area of research about a decade ago. As far as is known, Sen’s conjecture seems to be correct.
Sen also made great contributions to the notion of S-symmetry in string theory [1]. This duality, also known as strong–weak duality. An S-duality transformation maps states and vacua with coupling constant g in one theory (either a QFT or a string theory) to states and vacua with coupling constant 1/g in the dual theory. As this transformation maps strong coupling to weak coupling it allows perturbation theory to be applied to a strongly coupled theory.
Sen has 246 papers and preprints, of these 56 have over 100 citations*.
* http://inspirehep.net
References
[1] Sen, Ashoke (1994). “Dyon – monopole bound states, selfdual harmonic forms on the multi – monopole moduli space, and SL(2,Z) invariance in string theory”. Phys. Lett. B329: 217–221. arXiv:hep-th/9402032
[2] Sen, Ashoke (1998). “Tachyon condensation on the brane antibrane system”. JHEP 8: 012. arXiv:hep-th/9805170
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Sir Bernard Lovell dies
The astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell passed away on the 6 August 2012.
He is probably best remembered for being the founder of University of Manchester’s Jodrell Bank Observatory.
Our thoughts are with his family.
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Membership of the International Association of Mathematical Physics
My application to join the International Association of Mathematical Physics (IAMP) was successful. I received a letter via email on the 20th July 2012 stating this. I am now an ordinary member of the IAMP.
The International Association of Mathematical Physics (IAMP) was founded in 1976 in order to promote research in mathematical physics. The Association invites mathematicians and physicists (including students) interested in this goal to become members.
http://www.iamp.org/page.php?page=page_start
The International Congress of Mathematical Physics (ICMP) is organised by the IAMP, the next congress is in Aalborg, 6-11 August 2012.
Follow this link for more information about joining.
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