Weathering the storm
"You can flood a city, but you can't drown a university", says Greg Seab, a physicist at the University of New Orleans who was speaking at a press conference on the impact of Katrina on local physi...
Glue and cuprates
One of the most sought after theories in condensed matter physics is that of high temperature superconductivity. It is hard to walk into these kind of talks and understand what is going on. If it is t...
A decade of the New Journal of Physics
So as not to be outdone by the APS, here’s a photo of a cake baked in honour of the 10th anniversary of IOP Publishing’s New Journal of Physics. The first-ever multi-discipline open access...
Happy Birthday, PRL
That’s some cake! Yesterday evening my IOP Publishing colleagues and I managed to blag our way into a posh reception celebrating 50 years of the journal Physical Review Letters. I forgot to take...
A new spin on silicon and graphene
At last year’s March Meeting in Denver, Ian Appelbaum gave a ten-minute talk about how he had injected spin-polarized electrons into a piece of silicon, transported them micrometres and then det...
Black holes as quantum-information mirrors
This is the tale of Alice, Bob and a black hole. Alice and Bob are a couple with a big communication problem — they only talk using quantum information systems. Usually this involves sending enc...
Comparisons
Being at the APS meeting last year in Denver, I can’t help but think about some comparisons. Although I was at the march meeting last year in a different capacity (as a researcher, giving my 10+...
Physicists and climate change
How physicists are contributing to the study of climate change
Read article: Physicists and climate change
Hurricanes and extreme weather systems
Now for a topic that is close to the heart for many inhabitants of New Orleans – hurricanes. The devastation caused by the events in 2005 by hurricane Katrina led to most of the inhabitants of N...
Cats and dogs with their tails tied together
Yesterday I went to a news conference given by five physicists who believe that materials called “block copolymers” could help the electronics industry continue its relentless drive toward...
