Scientists do experiments with all sorts: semiconductor lasers, low temperature helium, … babies. There is a paper in last week’s Science by Gweon and Schulz on reasoning in (16-month old) babies. Scientists can reason, at least I hope I can. If my mobile is inert, I check the battery isn’t flat by plugging it in […]
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Over the last two days perhaps 250 or more prospective students and their parents visited the Department, saw our labs, and heard talks from either Jim and Paul, or Paul and I. It was busy, as was campus, I think there almost 4,000 on campus on Saturday. It took a lot of effort to organise. […]
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Of course, there is both good and bad coverage of science in the media. Entertainingly, a Mail Online article has both. It covers a Nature paper by Copeland et al., a team of anthropologists who measured levels of strontium isotopes in teeth from our early human ancestors. The Mail Online article starts “Scientists may finally have […]
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The 2011/2012 academic year ended yesterday. I think it is my 12th at Surrey – time flies. There is still some marking to do, and the undergraduates will only learn their exam results next week, but semester is mostly done. The undergraduates are off home, to summer jobs, on holidays etc, and in the case […]
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I have just finished watching Apples: British to the core. A fun BBC4 program on apples. First of all, I didn’t realise that commercial apple trees are Frankenstein-like monsters with the fruiting top part of the one plant grafted onto a root from a different plant. Guess this is because I am an ignorant physicist.
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I was helping a PhD student of mine with a talk yesterday. I was doing the usual stuff, saying you basically want one slide per minute of your talk, that it should tell a story, just make a few points clearly, not try and make too many points and confuse the audience, etc. I am […]
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