Fifteen tips to make scientific conferences more welcoming for everyone

Physics World  September 2, 2019 As summer draws to a close scientists around the world reflect on their international conference experiences. Since 2005 SPIE has advocated for women scientists, creating an annual Women in Optics Planner that is distributed to schools and colleges all over the world. Its regular meetings feature a range of equity, diversity and inclusion events, which include talks, training and networking opportunities. Inspired by SPIE’s efforts and their recent call to arms for increased diversity in physics, Physics World presents their advice…read more.

All Engineering Knowledge Has an Expiration Date. The Trick Is to Know When

IEEE Spectrum  August 23, 2019 According to the author as new knowledge accumulates, some old knowledge becomes irrelevant and falls off the knowledge stack. Almost all the college course work one took long ago is now useless in itself, although what remains is an engineering mind-set and a mathematical grounding. The purging of obsolete knowledge is probably insufficient to make room for the new stuff, as there seems to be an exponential increase in knowledge. The complexity of our work is always increasing, similar to the increase in entropy decreed by the second law of thermodynamics. Even as Moore’s Law […]

Physicists solve 2,000-year-old optical problem

Phys.org  August 9, 2019 Over 2,000 years ago, Greek scientist Diocles recognized a problem with optical lenses—when looking through devices equipped with them, the edges appeared fuzzier than the center. He proposed that the effect occurs because the lenses were spherical so that light striking at an angle could not be focused because of differences in refraction. Most such efforts have involved creating aspherical lenses to counteract refraction problems. And while they have resulted in improvement, the solutions have generally been expensive and inadequate for some applications. Researchers in Mexico have found a way of fixing the problem with any […]

Coaching scientists to play well together

Science Daily  July 18, 2019 When scientists from different disciplines collaborate — as is increasingly necessary to confront the complexity of challenging research problems — interpersonal tussles often arise. A free online training tool developed by researchers at Northwestern University called teamscience.net has proven to develop skills to work with other scientists outside their own discipline. Scientists who completed the program’s modules — called COALESCE — significantly boosted their knowledge about team science and increased their self-confidence about being able to successfully work in scientific teams…read more.

Russian website reportedly selling science article authorships

Phys.org  July 22, 2019 Several websites are reporting the entity accused of selling authorships is International Publisher. Translations made by Science Chronicle suggest the group behind the site is selling authorships on finished articles listed in Scopus—and some listed by Web of Science. There are apparently authorship guarantees and tiered pricing. 73 of the papers are to be published in India-based journals, 54 based in Venezuela, 48 in the U.S., 33 in Russia and 28 in Pakistan—the names of the journals are not given. Retractionwatch is reporting that they have found evidence of 10,000 researchers paying to have their names […]

A New Study Just Revealed That Earth’s Core Is Actually Leaking

Science Alert  July 11, 2019 By looking at very small variations in the ratio of isotopes of the element tungsten, an international team of researchers (Canada, France, USA – UC Davies, Florida State University, UT Houston, Australia) suggests that some core material does transfer into the base of these mantle plumes, and the core has been leaking this material for the past 2.5 billion years. The study gives us a tracer that can be used to investigate core-mantle interaction and the change in the internal dynamics of our planet, and which can boost our understanding of how and when the […]

Strange warping geometry helps to push scientific boundaries

Nanowerk  July 12, 2019 Atomic interactions in everyday solids and liquids are so complex that some of these materials’ properties continue to elude physicists’ understanding, even beyond the capability of mathematics. A team of researchers in the US (Princeton University, University of Maryland) turned to geometry instead. They built an electronic array on a microchip that simulates particle interactions in a hyperbolic plane. They used superconducting circuits to create a lattice that functions as a hyperbolic space. When the researchers introduce photons into the lattice, they can answer a wide range of difficult questions by observing the photons’ interactions in […]

Experiment reverses the direction of heat flow

Science Daily  June 27, 2019 An international team of researchers (Brazil, Germany, Singapore) has experimentally demonstrated the reversal of heat flow for two quantum correlated spins-1/2, initially prepared in local thermal states at different effective temperatures, employing a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance setup. They observed a spontaneous energy flow from the cold to the hot system. This process is enabled by a tradeoff between correlations and entropy that they quantified with information-theoretical quantities. These results highlight the subtle interplay of quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and information theory. They further provide a mechanism to control heat on the microscale…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE

China steps up threat to deprive US of rare earths

Phys.org  June 29, 2019 As a counter-strike in the trade war, according to state-owned newspapers, advise the US to not underestimate China’s ability to safeguard its own development rights and interests. If the US increasingly suppresses the development of China, sooner or later, China will use rare earths as a weapon and rare-earth resources should serve domestic needs first, but China is also willing to meet the legitimate needs of countries around the world…read more.

Good fellows: 2019 Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellows announced

EurekAlert  May 22, 2019 The VBFF is the Department of Defense’s most prestigious single-investigator award and supports basic research with the potential for transformative impact. Each Fellow receives up to $3 million over a five-year term to pursue their research. The fellowship is funded by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering–and administered by the Office of Naval Research. The VBFF is named for Dr. Vannevar Bush, director of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development after World War II…read more.