Here are two related problems. First, the number of applicants to UK university courses in the physical sciences has fallen by 26% over the last three years. Second, there is an increasing tide of opinion – not only among opinion-formers, but also among those who set research priorities – that the future of physics in […]
Recent developments in the use of high magnetic fields and pulsed NMR techniques have made it possible to probe the structure of organic compounds as complex as proteins. Imaging machines based on the NMR principle have also been developed, and now provide a powerful and non-invasive tool for diagnosing a variety of medical conditions. However, […]
Read article: Nonlinearity in the heart
Nonlinear wave dynamics can help to explain what happens to the heart during an irregularity of the heartbeat known as a cardiac arrhythmia
Physicists tend to shy away from philosophy (and religion, although there are some exceptions). Any dealings with philosophy – other than those concerning quantum theory – tend to be superficial allusions to Karl Popper’s notion of falsification or to the “paradigm shifts” championed by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . […]
The foundation of Altschuler’s argument is that although the plays refer to many astronomical events that occurred before de Vere’s death in 1604 – such as the supernova in 1572 and the Earth’s magnetic field, first proposed in 1600 by William Gilbert – there are no references to any such events after his death. William […]
The UK at present has no nuclear physics facilities of its own, and very little investment in facilities overseas. “SIRIUS would open up many opportunities in a number of areas, most notably in materials science and nuclear astrophysics, ” says Bill Gelletly, the Surrey University physicist who is SIRIUS project scientist. SIRIUS may also have […]
Germany has a much less even pattern of citation than the US or England, with strengths in certain core fields, including physical sciences, maths and engineering, and weaknesses in economics and social science. France also performs well in engineering – despite a relatively modest output of papers – and is strong in applied maths and […]
Most of the extra money – £300m over three years – will go on a £600m Joint Infrastructure Fund that the government is setting up with the Wellcome Trust, the world’s largest biomedical research charity. The Wellcome Trust has also promised £110m towards the cost of a synchrotron radiation source called DIAMOND, and the government […]
In quantum teleportation the quantum state of an object held by “Alice” is instantaneously sent to “Bob”. The technique works by sending one half of an “entangled” light beam to Alice and the other to Bob. Alice measures the interaction of this beam with the beam she wants to teleport. She sends that information to […]
Myhrvold confirms the link between basic research and profit by pointing out that technology companies founded in the last 30 years that rely on basic research carried out since the second World War now have a market value of over a trillion dollars. He also criticizes certain “misconceptions” that exist about long-term research in industry. […]
