Editorial – All artists must go where the people are
Every year many PhD graduates in STEM fields around Europe enter the academic market hoping to pursue a scientific career that finally leads to a secure permanent position. However, most of them will not make it. The reality is that there are not many of those positions and every step of a research career leads to an even narrower bottleneck. During the past years, all around Europe, the employment security of researchers is threatened by cuts in national research budgets as well as an unfair standardised recruitment system based on publications that often favours quantity over quality. The young researchers become casualties of the academic system and I am one of those victims …
SIF Fermi Prize to microelectronics
In 2001, the SIF established the prestigious “Enrico Fermi” Prize, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of the great scientist. This prize is given annually to one or more individuals who have specially influenced physics with their discoveries.
A commission of experts appointed by the SIF and the major research institutions in Italy, namely CNR, INAF, INFN, INGV, INRIM and the Fermi Centre, selects the winner among a list of candidates and forwards the proposal to the Council of the SIF for final approval …
Gravitational waves are coming closer
The new Advanced Virgo interferometer laser beam injection system was switched on on Friday, September 26th 2014 at EGO, the European Gravitational Observatory.
The big interferometers, built to detect gravitational waves for the first time, almost one century after Einstein announced their existence in 1916, are being improved.
On the Earth, there are only four such giant interferometers, with arms up to 4km long: Virgo, near Pisa; GEO600, near Hannover; and the two LIGO interferometers, in Louisiana and Washington State…
CERN Council selects Fabiola Gianotti as next Director-General
At its 173rd Closed Session on 4 November in Geneva, CERN Council selected the Italian physicist, Dr Fabiola Gianotti, as the Organization’s next Director-General. The appointment will be formalised at the December session of Council, and Dr Gianotti’s mandate will begin on 1 January 2016 and run for a period of five years. Council rapidly converged in favour of Dr Gianotti.
“We were extremely impressed with all three candidates put forward by the search committee,” said President of Council Agnieszka Zalewska. “It was Dr Gianotti’s vision for CERN’s future as a world leading accelerator laboratory, …
International Year of Light News
Ibn Al-Haytham to be a focus of the International Year of Light through partnering with 1001 Inventions The International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015) is delighted to welcome as a Founding Partner the award-winning educational organisation 1001 Inventions. British-based 1001 Inventions has the specific mission to raise awareness of the contributions to science, technology and culture from the Golden Age of Muslim Civilisation, and will play a key role during IYL2015 to promote and celebrate the 10th century pioneer Ibn Al-Haytham. Ibn Al-Haytham’s seminal work on optics ‘Kitab al-Manazir (The Book of Optics)’ was written around …
The new team of the European Commission
On 22 October 2014, the European Parliament approved the new European Commission [EC] team presented by Jean-Claude Juncker, who started their term of office on 1 November 2014.
The President Jean-Claude Junker put forward his agenda and presented his team earlier this year. In ten policy areas, he focused in particular on “a new boost for jobs, growth and investment”, “a connected digital single market”, and “a resilient energy union with a forward-looking climate change policy”, to quote the first priorities in the list.
New booklet – Accelerators: powering cutting-edge research
“Accelerators: powering cutting-edge research” is a booklet, prepared by the Science and Technology Facilities Council in collaboration with the Institute of Physics and the Cockcroft Institute. It explains what a particle accelerator does and examines its many different uses, from medical treatments to environmental impact.
EPS Individual Members – new fees in 2015
During the EPS Council held from 4 to 5 April in Trieste, Italy, the delegates voted for an increase of the fees for Individual Members. The categories of EPS membership, as well as the new fees are shown below.
Categories of EPS membership
Category 3A – individuals who are also members of an EPS Member Society
Category 3B – individuals who are members of an EPS Collaborating Society
UNOSAT joins the fight against Ebola
Hosted at CERN, UNITAR’s UNOSAT programme examines global satellite imagery for humanitarian use. Whether providing maps for disaster response teams or assessing conflict damage to help reconstruction, the detailed reports provided by the satellites are vital tools for aid workers. But how can satellite imagery help during a health crisis like the Ebola outbreak?
1st Altmetrics Conference
At the end of September, the conference “1:AM Altmetrics” was held at the premises of the Wellcome trust in London, UK. The subject of the meeting was new developments in article metrics, and in the evaluation of science, scientists and science publications. The participants included a range of different stakeholders in scholarly publishing, notably publishers, funding agencies and companies and institutions involved in evaluation and dissemination of science. Relatively few scientists and representatives from learned societies attended.
PLANCKS: an international Physics competition
PLANCKS (Physics League Across Numerous Countries for Kick-ass Students) is an annual international physics contest for bachelor and master students.
The three-day event consists of a symposium, the contest itself, an excursion, an informal get-together (with drinks and a party) and the awards ceremony. During the contest, around 150 physics students will try to answer challenging physics exercises.
In 2015 PLANCKS will be held in Leiden, The Netherlands, from the 22 to 24 May. The symposium will be held in a …
Touchdown! Rosetta’s Philae probe lands on comet
Rosetta is a space probe of the European Space Agency [ESA] to study the comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It is a joint mission with contributions from its Member States and NASA. Rosetta’s Philae lander was built by a consortium led by the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), the Max Planck Society (MPG), the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI). It is the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet. It is escorting the comet as they orbit the Sun together, and has deployed a lander to its surface. Comets are time capsules containing primitive material left over from the time when the Sun and its planets formed. By studying the …
