The Institute of Physics (IOP) has launched a new award to help universities attract, support and retain a diverse physics community. The Physics Inclusion Award will encompass several aspects of diversity such as race and ethnicity, neurodiversity and sexual orientation.

It replaces the long-established Project Juno, which rewarded university physics departments and organizations that showed they had taken action to address gender equality.

Project Juno was originally set up after the IOP examined the challenges facing UK university departments in the mid-2000s. Over the last 15 years, the number of women physics professors at UK universities has doubled, with women now making up a quarter of academic staff. But there remain many parts of the population that are under-represented in physics. Less than 1% of university physics staff, for example, are Black.

A steering group, chaired by University of Birmingham theoretical physicist Nicola Wilkin, began work on the new award in 2021. A pilot scheme ran from September 2023 to January 2024 involving staff from 11 physics departments in the UK and Ireland. They worked through a Physics Inclusion Award self-assessment tool, reviewed the effectiveness of the award criteria and took part in feedback sessions with the IOP.

“Building upon the success of Project Juno, [the new award] widens our offer to anyone who faces barriers because of who they are or where they come from – so that everyone is welcomed and included in physics”, says the IOP president, atomic physicist Keith Burnett. “To realize the incredible potential physics offers society, we need a growing, diverse, sustainable physics community which drives the physics of today and attracts the generation of tomorrow.”

Applications for the new award will open in late 2024.

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Researchers are divided over whether artificial intelligence (AI) is having a positive or negative impact on peer review. That is according to a new report from IOP Publishing, which looks at scientists’ perception and experiences of peer review. The study also finds that interest in a paper and the reputation of the journal remain the most important factors for researchers when considering whether to peer review an article.

Entitled State of Peer Review 2024, the report is based on a survey of more than 3000 researchers from over 100 countries. IOP Publishing carried out a similar survey in 2020 but researchers’ growing use of AI tools since then to write or augment peer-review reports has raised various ethical issues. In particular, there are questions over data protection, confidentiality and the accuracy of reviewer reports.

IOP Publishing, which publishes Physics World, currently does not allow the use of generative AI to “write or augment” peer-review reports or for AI tools to be named as authors on manuscripts. Instead, it encourages authors to be “open and transparent” about their use of such tools in their work. However, publishers do not yet have a way to accurately detect whether text has been generated by AI.

About 35% of respondents to the survey think that open-source generative AI tools such as ChatGPT will harm peer review, while 36% say it will have no impact. Just 29% believe AI can benefit scholarly communication. When asked to expand on their responses, researchers admit that such tools can provide some “useful outputs”. However, they warn that expert human verification and editing is vital before AI-generated text can be used in peer review.

The study also looks at how much peer review researchers carry out, finding that 30% of reviewers from high-income countries say they receive too many peer-review requests, compared with just 10% from low and middle-income countries. Moreover, 28% of senior researchers also say they get too many requests to peer review, compared to just 7% of PhD students and 9% of postdocs.

“Quality peer review is essential to the integrity and validity of science and relies on reviewers who are engaged, motivated and competent at providing constructive feedback,” says Laura Feetham-Walker, peer review engagement manager at IOP Publishing. “The insights we gain from this survey helps us to ensure we can continue to evolve the support we provide to the global reviewer community to help with their important work.”

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Physicists are well-known for their interest in coffee, not only drinking it but also studying the fascinating science behind an espresso.

Now researchers at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), have taken it a whole new level by forming a research institute dedicated to the science of the perfect brew.

The Coffee Center will be used by more than 50 researchers and includes labs dedicated to brewing, “sensory and cupping” and the chemical analysis of coffee.

The centre has its origins in a 2013 course on “the design of coffee” by UC Davis chemical engineers William Ristenpart and Tonya Kuhl.

Two years later and a coffee lab at the university was established and in 2022 construction began on the Coffee Center, which was funded with $6m from private donors.

The official opening on 3 May was attended by over 200 people, who were treated to bean roasting and espresso brewing demonstrations.

“Think of this center as a hub of all things coffee,” noted UC Davies chancellor Gary May at the opening. “Together, we bring rigorous coffee science and cutting-edge technology to the world stage.”

Better latte than never.

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The DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego has completed eight months of upgrades that will allow researchers to better control and study fusion plasmas.

DIII-D is the largest magnetic-fusion facility in the US and is used by more than 700 researchers at 100 institutions worldwide. The DIII-D tokamak is a donut-shaped vacuum chamber that is surrounded by electromagnets that confine a plasma at a temperatures exceeding 10 times that of the Sun, enough to fuse hydrogen to produce energy.

Since July 2023, engineers and technicians have installed new systems to better control the fusion plasma. This includes a range of new diagnostic instruments as well as enhancements to the way that the plasma is heated.

Another change is to the tokamak’s divertor system, which removes exhaust heat and impurities from the tokamak. Engineers have installed a new configuration called a “shape and volume rise” divertor, which consists of a series of modular divertor configurations that the DIII-D will now test when experiments start up later this month.

The new divertor will allow plasma shapes to be studied that are expected to produce high fusion power performance but were not possible with DIII-D’s previous divertor geometry.

Work on the upgraded facility is also expected to support experiments that will be performed at the ITER experimental fusion reactor, which is currently being built in Cadarache, France.

“The upgrades provide us with exciting new capabilities and key enhancements,” notes DIII-D director Richard Buttery. “Our scientists will be able to use our upgraded systems and diagnostics to answer key questions on commercial industry–relevant technology, materials, and operations”.

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China has successfully launched a mission to bring back sample from the far side of the Moon – the first attempt to do so. Chang’e-6 was launched at 17:27 p.m. local time today by a Long March 5 rocket from Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island. If the landing is successful, the craft is expected to collect and return to Earth up to two kilograms of soil from an area not previously sampled.

China has made considerable progress in lunar exploration in recent years, which began in 2007 with the launch of the lunar orbiter Chang’e-1.

Since then it has carried out four further uncrewed missions that included Chang’e-4, which in 2019 became the first mission to touch down on the far side of the Moon. That craft landed in the Von Kármán crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin – one of the oldest known impact craters in the Solar System and represents one of the Moon’s most scientifically rich regions.

China’s previous lunar mission was Chang’e-5, which launched in November 2020, and successfully brought back 1.7 kg of samples from the near side of the Moon a month later, the first recovery of lunar samples in 45 years.

Most of the returned samples are stored at the National Astronomical Observatories of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, with possible access by foreign scientists through collaboration with Chinese colleagues.

To the dark side

Chang’e-6 was built as a back-up for Chang’e-5, but following the success of that mission Chang’e-6 could be repurposed for its own assignment.

Weighing 8.2 tonnes, Chang’e-6 consists of four parts: an ascender, lander, returner and orbiter. Upon entering orbit around the Moon, the ascender and lander will separate and touch down in the southern part of the Apollo crater, which lies in the northeastern side of the South Pole-Aitkin Basin.

The lander will use a panoramic camera, spectrometer and ground-penetrating radar among other payloads to document the landing site. Chang’e-6 will also carry payloads from France, Italy, Sweden and Pakistan, which includes an instrument to measure surface levels of radon.

Within 48 hours after touching down, Chang’e-6 will use a robotic arm to scoop up small rocks from the surface and drill up to 2 m into the ground with the aim to collect about 2 kg of material.

The ascender will lift off from the top of the lander and dock with the returner-orbiter in orbit. The sample container is then transferred to the returner, which will head back to the Earth.

A relay satellite – Queqiao-2 – was launch in March to help communications between Chang’e-6 and ground stations on Earth.

It is hoped that the returned samples will shed light on the early evolution of the Moon given that the far side is not as extensively covered by ancient lava flows as the near side, which helps to preserves materials from the Moon’s early formation. It is also hoped that the results from the mission will provide clues to why the two sides are so different.

China plans two further lunar missions with Chang’e-7 in 2026 that will explore the lunar south pole for water followed by Chang’e-8 in 2028 that will build a rudimentary outpost on the Moon in collaboration with Russia.

China then aims to put astronauts on the Moon by 2030, some four years after the US Artemis crewed mission to the Moon, which is currently planned for September 2026.

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Following almost three decades of planning and construction the world’s highest observatory has begun operations. The University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO), which is located at an altitude of 5640 m on the summit of Cerro Chajnantor at Atacama in northern Chile, officially opened today. The infrared telescope will be used to better our understanding of the universe as well as the origin of life.

At such a height, the clear skies and little water vapour in the atmosphere make Atacama one of the best places in the world for ground-based infra-red astronomy.  Built by the University of Tokyo, the telescope, which can be remotely controlled, includes a 6.5 m primary mirror that has been developed at Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona.

The observatory features two spectrographic instruments. The Simultaneous-color Wide-field Infrared Multi-object Spectrograph (SWIMS) will cover a wavelength range of 0.9 to 2.5 micrometres to observe a large areas of the sky. SWIMS will be used to study galaxies as well at the evolution of supermassive black holes that exist at their centres.

The Mid-Infrared Multimode Imager for gaZing at the UnKnown Universe (MIMIZUKU), meanwhile, will operate between 2-38 micrometres. MIMIZUKU will be used to better understand the chemical nature of organic dust in the universe, which can reveal details about the evolution of different materials, including those that led to the creation of life.

Takashi Miyata, from the University of Tokyo who is managing the observatory’s construction, has been working on the TAO for over 20 years and says he is “very excited” about the start of observations.

“Thanks to the height and arid environment, TAO will be the only ground-based telescope in the world capable of clearly viewing mid-infrared wavelengths,” he adds. “This area of the spectrum is extremely good for studying the environments around stars, including planet-forming regions”.

Given the issues working at such an altitude, Yuzuru Yoshii from the Univeristy of Tokyo notes that construction “was an incredible challenge”. He adds there were also political issues that had to be respected.

“I have liaised with Indigenous peoples to ensure their rights and views are considered, the Chilean government to secure permission, local universities for technical collaboration, and even the Chilean Health Ministry to make sure people can work at that altitude in a safe manner,” notes Yoshii. “Thanks to all involved, research I’ve only ever dreamed about can soon become a reality, and I couldn’t be happier.”

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The US Department of Energy has given the green light for the next stage of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). Known as “critical decision 3A”, the move allows officials to purchase “long-lead procurements” such as equipment, services and materials before assembling the collider can begin.

The EIC, costing between $1.7bn and $2.8bn, will be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York. This will involve the lab revamping its existing 3.8 km-long Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider accelerator complex that collides heavy nuclei such as gold and copper to produce a quark–gluon plasma.

A major part of the upgrade will involve adding an electron ring so that the EIC consists of two intersecting accelerators – one producing an intense beam of electrons and the other a high-energy beam of protons or heavier atomic nuclei.

Each high-luminosity beam will be steered into head-on collisions with the particles produced providing clues to the internal nature of protons and their components.

“Passing this milestone and getting these procurements under way will help us achieve our ultimate goal of efficiently delivering a unique high-energy, high-luminosity polarized beam electron–ion collider that will be one of the most challenging and exciting accelerator complexes ever built,” notes EIC project director Jim Yeck. Construction is expected to start in 2026 with first experiments beginning in the first half of the next decade.

Meanwhile, the UK has said it will provide £58.4m ($73.8) to develop new detector and accelerator infrastructure for the EIC. The money comes as part of a £473m package of spending by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Infrastructure Fund.

This money also includes £125m for a new diffraction and imaging electron microscopy facility at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Daresbury Laboratory. The facility, known as Relativistic Ultrafast Electron Diffraction and Imaging, will be the world’s most powerful microscope for imaging dynamics being able to study biological and chemical processes in “real time” at the femtosecond timescale.

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You may remember the recent news that it only takes three fish to make up a school.

Well now comes more vertebrata developments thanks to researchers at Johns Hopkins University who have studied the noise that a swimming school makes as it moves in unison.

It is already well known that fish swim in groups to avoid predators, but wouldn’t all that commotion lead to increased noise and thus attract the nearest big fish? To find out, the researchers created a 3D model of between one and nine swimming mackerel.

As well as different numbers of fish, they also modelled varying swimming formations, how close they swam to each another and the degree to which their movements matched their nearest neighbour.

The team found that a school of fish moving together in just the right way – flapping their tail fins at alternate times rather than in unison — was incredibly effective at reducing noise, so much so that the sound that a school of seven fish produced was the same as a single fish (Bioinspir. Biomim. doi.org:10.1088/1748-3190/ad3a4e).

It also resulted in the fish swimming faster while using less energy. “A predator, such as a shark, may perceive it as hearing a lone fish instead of a group,” notes Johns Hopkins mechanical engineer Rajat Mittal. “This could have significant implications for prey fish.”

The team now plan to increase the complexity of the models to include ocean turbulence to reveal more sea-crets of schooling fish.

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The British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, whose work led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, died yesterday on 8 April at the age of 94. Higgs’s work, which he carried out in the early 1960s, resulted in the prediction of a new particle, setting in motion a decades-long hunt for it. The Higgs boson was finally discovered at the CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva in 2012, with Higgs going on to share half of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics together with the Belgium physicist François Englert.

Born on 29 May 1929 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in north-east England, Higgs attended Cotham Grammar School in Bristol, UK, where his father was stationed as an engineer for the BBC during the Second World War. He later enrolled as a physics undergraduate at King’s College London, where he also did a PhD on the theory of molecules. Higgs then worked at several British universities before settling at the University of Edinburgh in 1960, where he remained until retirement in 1996.

It was at Edinburgh where Higgs did his ground-breaking research. In 1964 he and Englert published papers independently of each other about a mechanism that could give rise to the origin of mass of subatomic particles. It arises from a symmetry-breaking event that occurred in the very early universe that created a uniform scalar field known as the Higgs field that pervades all space. Elementary particles such as leptons, quarks and the W and Z bosons conveying the weak force “acquire” their distinctive masses by virtue of their unique and different couplings to this field.

Wave–particle duality, which lies at the heart of quantum mechanics, dictates that vibrations in this field should give rise to a spin-0 particle known as the Higgs boson. Just as vibrating the electromagnetic field generates waves corresponding to photons, so should shaking the Higgs field create such bosons. The work by Higgs and others triggered a long quest to discover the particle using huge particle colliders.

But the tricky aspect that faced particle physicists is that the energy required to create detectable quantities of Higgs bosons was unknown. The answer, however, came in 2012 at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which had first switched on just four years earlier. Physicists working on the LHC’s giant ATLAS and CMS detectors analysed vast numbers of proton–proton collisions at 8 TeV and found strong evidence for the Higgs boson with a mass of about 125 GeV.

Without his theory, atoms could not exist and radioactivity would be a force as strong as electricity and magnetism

John Ellis

A year following CERN’s discovery, Higgs shared half of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics with Englert. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded it to the pair “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments”.

As well as the Nobel prize, Higgs won many other awards including the Paul Dirac Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics in 1997, the Wolf Prize in Physics (2004) and the American Physical Society J J Sakurai Prize (2010).

In 1999 Higgs turned down a knighthood, but in 2012 he accepted membership of the Order of the Companions of Honour. The following year he was granted the Freedom of the City of Bristol and in 2014 he was awarded the Freedom of the City of Newcastle and the Freedom of the City of Edinburgh.

Modest and remarkable

Tributes to Higgs have flowed in from the world of physics. “Besides his outstanding contributions to particle physics, Peter was a very special person, an immensely inspiring figure for physicists across the world, a man of rare modesty, a great teacher and someone who explained physics in a very simple and yet profound way,” said CERN director general Fabiola Gianotti. “An important piece of CERN’s history and accomplishments is linked to him. I am very saddened, and I will miss him sorely.”

Particle physicist John Ellis from King’s College London, who has spent most of his career at CERN, told Physics World that “a giant of particle physics has left us”.

“Without his theory, atoms could not exist and radioactivity would be a force as strong as electricity and magnetism,” adds Ellis. “His prediction of the existence of the particle that bears his name was a deep insight, and its discovery at CERN in 2012 was a crowning moment that confirmed his understanding of the way the universe works.”

Keith Burnett, president of the Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics World, notes that Higgs was a “true giant of physics”.

“Higgs’s legacy as the proposer of the Higgs boson and as the joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics made him one of the most significant figures in world science,” notes Burnett. “His life’s work is certain to continue to inspire, inform and advance our understanding of the universe for many generations to come.”

Peter Mathieson, principal and vice chancellor at Edinburgh, said Peter Higgs was a “remarkable individual”. He was “a truly gifted scientist whose vision and imagination have enriched our knowledge of the world that surrounds us [whose] pioneering work has motivated thousands of scientists, and his legacy will continue to inspire many more for generations to come.

Shunning the limelight

In an interview with Physics World in 2012 shortly before the discovery of the Higgs boson was announced, Higgs expressed his embarrassment at having a particle named after him. Always self-effacing, he felt it placed too much credit on him at the expense of other theorists, constantly referring during the interview instead to the “so-called Higgs boson”. Higgs also admitted that he did not want to write an autobiography as he was “too lazy”.

Particle physicist Frank Close, who wrote a biography of Peter Higgs in 2022 called Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass, told Physics World how Higgs disliked the limelight and that his style was to work in isolation. Yet Close adds that Higgs was “comfortable in the company of friends and colleagues, and always a delight to talk with”.

“We shared the [COVID-19] lockdown in 2020 by talking on the phone every Friday or Saturday for one or two hours, from which I gradually put together the story of how his life changed when the boson became headline news following its description as The God Particle – a moniker that Peter, an atheist, disliked,” notes Close. “I was astonished when he admitted to me ‘It ruined my life’ – a quote that I double checked with him before including it [in the book].”

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Scientists and engineers have announced the completion of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) – the largest camera ever built. Taking almost two decades to build, the 3200 megapixel instrument will form the heart of the 8.4 m Simonyi Survey Telescope based at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Cerro Pachón in the Andes.

First proposed some three decades ago to help study the nature of dark matter, the LSST has been built at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. It is 3 × 1.65 m – roughly the size of a small car – and with a mass of 3000 kg.

The LSST includes three lenses, which have been constructed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The biggest being 1.57 m in diameter and is the largest high-performance optical lens ever made. The LSST has now completed a programme of rigorous testing and will be shipped to Chile where it will be installed atop the Simonyi Survey Telescope later this year.

‘The greatest movie of all time’

The camera’s resolution of 3200 megapixel – some 200 times larger than a high-end consumer camera – means that it can take hundreds of ultrahigh-definition TVs to display just one of the LSST’s images at full size.

“Its images are so detailed that it could resolve a golf ball from around 15 miles away, while covering a swath of the sky seven times wider than the full moon,” notes SLAC physicist Aaron Roodman, who is deputy director of the Vera C Rubin Observatory and leads construction of the LSST camera. “These images with billions of stars and galaxies will help unlock the secrets of the universe.”

Beginning next year, the LSST will spend over three or four nights to take a complete picture of the southern night sky. It will then replicate this process over a decade to produce almost 1000 full images of sky.

With the completion of the unique LSST camera we will soon start producing the greatest movie of all time and the most informative map of the night sky ever assembled

Željko Ivezić

This will be used to observe the universe in unprecedented detail, plotting the positions and measuring the brightness of objects in the sky to help in improving our understanding of dark matter and dark energy, which is driving he expansion of the universe. It will examine 20 billion galaxies – some 10% of the galaxies predicted to exist in the observable universe.

The observatory will also be used to produce the most detailed star map of the Milky Way with the expectation to image 17 billion stars as well as catalogue some six million small objects within our solar system including asteroids.

“With the completion of the unique LSST camera we will soon start producing the greatest movie of all time and the most informative map of the night sky ever assembled,” notes astronomer Željko Ivezić from the University of Washington who is director of construction of the Vera C Rubin Observatory.

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How many fish make up a school? It sounds like one of those trick questions, but physicists at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and the University of Bristol have now found an answer.

To do so they fitted a “bowl-shaped” aquarium at Bristol University with cameras to track the three-dimensional trajectories of zebrafish, studying group sizes of two, three, four and fifty fish (Nature Comms 15 2591).

The researchers then used methods from statistical physics to analyse swimming patterns and deduce the minimum group size where individual movements change and become coordinated group patterns.

They found that an isolated pair of fish prefer to move one after the other but when in threes the zebrafish swim next to each other – a characteristic of a large school of fish.

When the researchers then marked small sub-groups of three fish within a larger school, they found that the group of three moved within the school in a similar way to an isolated group of three. So, while three fish form a school, two are not enough.

The team now aim to apply their findings to the behaviour of other animals and how groups of people behave at parties or mass gatherings.

“We will see whether the simple limit of the number three also applies,” says Düsseldorf physicist Hartmut Löwen.

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Machine learning and artificial intelligence are finding applications in many different areas but scientists from Belgium have now raised the, er, bar somewhat.

They have used machine-learning algorithms to predict the taste and quality of beer and what compounds brewers could use to improve the flavour of certain tipples.

Kevin Verstrepen from KU Leuven and colleagues spent five years characterizing over 200 chemical properties from 250 Belgian commercial beers across 22 beer styles, such as Blond and Tripel beers. They also gathered tasting notes from a panel of 15 people and from the RateBeer online beer review database.

They then trained a machine-learning model on the data, finding it could predict the flavour and score of the beers using just the beers’ chemical profile.

By adding certain aromas predicted by the model, the researchers were even able to boost the quality – as determined by blind tasting – of existing commercial Belgian ale.

The team hops the findings could be used to improve alcohol-free beer. Yet KU Leuven researcher Michiel Scheurs admits that they did celebrate the work “with the alcohol-containing variants”.

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Brazil has become the first country from the Americas to join the CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva. It is now an associate member of the lab after an earlier agreement in March 2022 was ratified by the country’s legislature with the country officially joining on 13 March. Brazil first started co-operating with CERN more than 30 years ago.

As an associate member, Brazilian nationals can now apply for staff positions and graduate programmes, while firms in Brazil can bid for CERN contracts. But unlike CERN’s 23 full member states, the country will not be represented on CERN Council or contribute to lab funding. Brazil is now the eighth associate member of CERN, with Chile and Ireland in the early stages of applying too.

Close collaboration

Formal co-operation between CERN and Brazil began in 1990 when scientists from the country starting taking part in the DELPHI experiment at CERN’s Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) – the predecessor to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Since then Brazil’s experimental particle-physics community has doubled in size to some 200 scientists.

Researchers, engineers and students from Brazil now collaborate in CERN experiments such as the four main LHC detectors – ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb – as well as in ALPHA antimatter experiment and the Isotope mass Separator On-Line facility, which produces and studies radioactive nuclei.

As well as particle-physics research, since December 2020 CERN and Brazil’s National Centre for Research in Energy and Materials have been formally cooperating on accelerator technology R&D.

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The Institute of Physics (IOP) has announced three areas for the second phase of its “impact projects” initiative. They are: the green economy (second phase), space technologies and opportunities in venture capital investment. Three further topics – artificial intelligence, medical physics and metamaterials – have been chosen as potential impact projects for 2025.

The IOP’s impact projects involve hosting community debates, gathering evidence and setting out recommendations to influence national science strategies and investment as well as showcasing important but less understood areas of physics.

The first phase of the initiative concentrated on three areas: quantum, which fed into the UK’s £2.5bn National Quantum Technology Strategy; semiconductors, which influenced the £1bn National Semiconductor Strategy; and the green economy, resulting in the IOP’s recent Physics Powering the Green Economy report.

This second phase was carried out in consultation with IOP members and, for the first time, the wider physics community. Some 26 projects were submitted and a panel consisting of IOP fellows and members then prioritized the ideas. Chosen projects had to align with the IOP’s strategy; match UK and Ireland physics expertise; and offer an opportunity for wider influence and impact.

Louis Barson, the IOP’s director of science, innovation and skills, says the second phase represents an “important moment” for the IOP. “The second phase [comprises] three crucial areas that give us lots of opportunity to develop fresh thinking and have a real impact on the development of the scientific landscape for innovators, researchers and businesses,” he says. “If these are areas where you have an interest or expertise – or if you want to suggest another impact project – check out the IOP website for more detail on how to get involved.”

Barson adds that the areas support the IOP’s strategy, which launched last month. “[The strategy] commits us to the three priorities of tackling the skills shortage, strengthening physics and exploring the social and economic benefits of physics,” he says. “These impact projects will allow us to bring that to life.”

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This year promises to be a bumper one for cicadas given that 2024 marks the first time in more than 200 years that two broods belonging to two species will emerge at the same time.

Now researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology in the US say we might have more to worry about than just the cacophony that the insects are famous for.

They have studied cicadas’ “unique” ability to produce jets of urination from their small bodies.

Most insects urinate via droplets given that it takes less energy to do so and that their orifices are too small to do anything else.

Cicadas, however, are such voracious eaters of tree sap that individually flicking away each drop would be too taxing and would result in being unable to extract enough nutrients.

To get around this problem, they instead pee via short jets (see video above).

“Previously, it was understood that if a small animal wants to eject jets of water, then this becomes a bit challenging, because the animal expends more energy to force the fluid’s exit at a higher speed,” notes Elio Challita, who is currently based at Harvard University, US. “This is due to surface tension and viscous forces. But a larger animal can rely on gravity and inertial forces to pee. ”

Due to the cicadas’ larger size they use less energy to expel a jet and indeed, it turns out that cicadas are the smallest animal to create such high-speed jets.

The team thinks that a greater understanding of cicadas urination could help in the design of better nozzles and robots.

And with a double brood emerging this year, it could be a noisy, and wet, summer.

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An almost 300-year-old violin that was played by the great virtuoso Niccolò Paganini has been studied at the European Synchrotron, the ESRF.

As one of the most famous violins in the world, “Il Cannone” was crafted in 1743 by the great luthier Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri. The instrument was Paganini’s most treasured due to its unique acoustic properties.

Paganini is considered to be one of the greatest violinists of all time, so talented that it was rumoured that his mother had sold his soul to the devil to gain his abilities.

The ESRF teamed up with the violin’s custodians, the municipality of Genoa, and the Premio Paganini, to carry out an X-ray analysis to help determine the structural status of the wood and bonding parts of the violin.

The measurements were performed on ESRF’s new beamline, BM18, which is able to construct a 3D X-ray image of the instrument with micrometre resolution using a technique called phase-contrast X-ray microtomography.

It is hoped that carrying out such measurements will help to preserve the instrument, which is only occasionally played.

ESRF scientist Luigi Paolasini, who led the project, says it was a “fantastic experience” to work on the violin.

“[It] opens new possibilities to investigate the conservation of ancient musical instruments of cultural interest, as a crossing point between music, history and science”, he says.

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