European Physical Society responds to ERA Consultation
The European Physical Society has responded to the ERA Framework Public Consultation: ‘Areas of untapped potential for the development of the European Research Area’. The European Physical Society would like to thank its members for providing their comments and insights.
The response by the European Physical Society, along with those made by other interested individuals and organisations and individuals, will soon be published on the European Commission website. The final version of the European Physical Society’s response can also be downloaded directly here.
Editorial
Dear Readers,
The year 2011 comes to an end with fireworks from CERN.
On 13 December a special seminar was held in CERN’s main auditorium, where the spokespersons of the two major experimental collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider [LHC], Fabiola Gianotti (ATLAS) and Guido Tonelli (CMS), presented their results from the search for a new particle, a fundamental and desperately wanted ingredient of the Standard Model: the Brout-Englert-Higgs-Guralnik-Hagen-Kibble boson, currently called ‘the Higgs’…
Call for nominations for the 2012 Lise Meitner Prize
Nominations are now open for the 2012 Lise Meitner Prize for Nuclear Science, which is given biannually by the European Physical Society’s Nuclear Physics Board in recognition of outstanding work in the fields of applied, experimental or theoretical nuclear science.
The Lise Meitner Prize – which is named after the Austrian physicist who gave a fundamental contribution in the discovery of nuclear fission – is sponsored by CANBERRA. Nominations, which may be put forward for individuals or groups, are hoped will represent the breadth of nuclear science in Europe…
EASPA launches: European Physical Society a founder
The ‘European Alliance for Subject-Specific and Professional Accreditation and Quality Assurance’ [EASPA] was founded during a meeting at the ASIIN offices in Düsseldorf, Germany, on 29 November this year. EASPA is a pan-European platform for quality assurance in higher education, uniting eight member professional associations in Europe, which act as European field-specific networks.
The common goal of the alliance is to maintain and further develop Europe-wide disciplinary learning outcomes, competence profiles and qualification frameworks; as well as corresponding quality assurance tools; thereby making…
Pioneering IZEST international laser centre launched
The International Zetawatt-Exawatt Science Technology [IZEST] launching workshop was held at the Ecole Polytechnique, in Palaiseau, France on 28-29 November this year. The programme of the workshop involved a wide variety of lectures relating to the IZEST project – and the signature of the IZEST agreement by Xavier Michel, of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique [CEA], and Daniel Verwaerde, also of the CEA.
IZEST is to be the first international laser centre, which is designed to explore fundamental physics at the highest-energy frontiers. The European Physical Society – which was represented at the meeting by John Dudley – would like to…
European Physical Society Physics Education Division
Since 2000, the European Physical Society’s Physics Education Division has been contributing to awareness of the relevance of physics in everyday culture, to interaction amongst schools and universities and to a better quality of physics teaching at all levels.
The Physics Education Division achieves this by addressing and promoting physics, the continued education of teachers, large scale educational changes – such as the Bologna process – and successful new teaching methods, taking into account differences and similarities in the European education systems…
EGO-ICRR gravitational wave meeting
A meeting between the European Gravitational Observatory [EGO] and the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research [ICRR], on the topic of gravitational wave research, was held at the University of Tokyo’s Kashiwa campus on 4-5 October this year.
The meeting, held within the framework of “Italy in Japan 2011”, was intended to foster the collaboration between the Large-scale Cryogenic Gravitational wave Telescope [LCGT], which has been recently funded for construction in the Kamioka mine; and the Virgo Gravitational Wave Observatory, which has been in operation for several years…
Executive Committee Meeting Summary
In conjunction with the Asia Europe Physics Summit conference, the European Physical Society Executive Committee met in Wroclaw, Poland, on 25 October 2011.
The open session of the committee was, of course, dedicated to meeting representatives from the Polish Physical Society and the Wroclaw University Physics Department. The committee also learned of the impressive scientific and economic situation of the Wroclaw region…
Editorial
Dear Readers,
The Executive Committee of the European Physical Society met in Wroclaw, Poland, at the end of October. News from the meeting, in the now customary summary format by Martina Knoop, can be found herein.
The Executive Committee meeting was held at the eve of the second Asia Europe Physics Summit, ASEPS2, which also took place in Wroclaw on 26-29 October. The summit witnessed a reinforced spirit of collaboration and cooperation…
European Physical Society Energy Group 2011 meeting
The Energy Group of the European Physical Society [EPS] held its 2011 meeting in Oslo, on 6-7 October this year. As is traditionally the case, the meeting served two purposes: to hold the meeting of the Board of the Energy Group and to present and discuss scientific issues around energy technologies.
In a half-day seminar, the topic of radioactive waste disposal was covered, with contributions dealing with basic issues and reports on the situations in the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom…
New European Physical Society Facebook page
The European Physical Society has just launched its new Facebook page, at facebook.com/europeanphysicalsociety. Here you will be able to keep up with all the current news from the European Physical Society – and the articles here on e-EPS – from the comfort of your own Facebook account. So do drop by and give us a ‘like’!
Or, if you prefer, you can also follow the European Physical Society on Twitter, on Google+, through our RSS Feed or our email subscription service.
EC publishes consultation on the ERA Framework
The European Commission has published its ‘Consultation on the ERA Framework: Areas of untapped potential for the development of the European Research Area (ERA)’; the EPS is preparing a response.
The consultation, in the form of a questionnaire, covers the following areas sections: cross border operation of research actors, coordination of science and technology actions, knowledge circulation, respondent identification, managing and monitoring the ERA partnership, researchers and research infrastructures…
