This made me chuckle so I couldn’t resist sharing it here. I think it’s amazing that robots have now become so sophisticated that they are now perfect in their ability to emulate the behaviour of a human being….or at least one who’s totally drunk!
Follow @telescoperThe Latest TV – Experimental Particle Physics at Sussex
Posted in Brighton, The Universe and Stuff with tags Brighton, Large Hadron Collider, Particle Physics, The Latest TV, University of Sussex on June 10, 2015 by telescoperI just came across this clip featuring our own Prof. Antonella de Santo of the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex (where she leads the Experimental Particle Physics group) talking about the group’s work on The Latest TV, a new documentary TV station based in Brighton.
Follow @telescoperAn “Enfys” for Sussex…
Posted in Biographical, LGBTQ+ with tags Cardiff University, Enfys, Stonewall, University of Sussex on June 9, 2015 by telescoperAs Head of School for Mathematical and Physical Sciences I get to do all kinds of jobs across the University to do with all kinds of matters, academic and non-academic alike. In the course of one of these – chairing the University’s Human Resources Committee – it occurred to me that it was very strange that it was a bit strange that a University (Sussex) so close to a famously gay-friendly city (Brighton) didn’t have any real forum for LGBT staff to share information, to support each other, and to run social, cultural or other events. It also seemed strange to me that the University of Sussex was not part of the Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme. Even worse, there is no official University staff representation at Brighton’s annual Pride celebrations, though the Student LGBTQ society has
My former institution, Cardiff University, not only has a thriving staff network (called Enfys, the Welsh word for “Rainbow”) and belongs to the Stonewall scheme, it also ranks 24th in the top 100 Equality Index of all UK employers.
Anyway, it was definitely with Enfys in mind that I suggested setting up a similar network here on the Sussex campus, open to all staff (not just academics). I wasn’t sure whether there would be any enthusiasm for it, but the senior management of the University gave me their backing to try.
And so it came to pass that we announced that a network was being set up, and there would be a kind of “launch party” on 18th June to plan what sort of things we would do. I had no idea how many people would be interested and was quite prepared for the idea to bomb completely. However, just a couple of weeks after the initial announcement we have more than 50 people on the mailing list, and I’m expecting good turnout for the launch which I hope will be a fun occasion in itself but also the start of something very interesting to be part of. I also hope people bring plenty of ideas for the sorts of events and activities we can organize and the energy and enthusiasm to work at actually bringing these ideas into being.
One of the most important things we have to do, though, is to come up with a name. Although I nicked the idea from them I don’t think we can really use Enfys. And “Sussex University LGBT Staff Network” sounds a bit dull. Any suggestions?
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Posted in Opera with tags Claude Debussy, Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande, Rebecca Bottone on June 8, 2015 by telescoperHaving had a very busy working birthday it was nice to take off to Cardiff for the weekend for a delayed treat. For me the cultural event of the weekend in the Welsh capital was neither One Direction nor the Manic Street Preachers, both which bands were playing there that weekend. It wasn’t even the Ladyboys of Bangkok, which I would definitely have preferred to either of the former acts. No, it was an evening at the Wales Millennium Centre for a new production of Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy.
This was an opera that was quite new to me, though I did know that the previous production of this work by Welsh National Opera was back in 1992 and the conductor was none other than Pierre Boulez. There is a famous recording of the piece on Deutsche Grammaphon, so the bar was set rather high for the new production. I don’t often agree with opera reviews so don’t usually read them before I go in case they put me off, but I did read the review in the Guardian of the opening night (May 31st) performance of this one as I was sent it by a friend. As it turns out there’s little I can add to George Hall’s review. It was absolutely magnificent.
The plot of Pelléas et Mélisande is, on one level, fairly simple. Prince Golaud finds a mysterious young woman, Mélisande, lost in a forest. She becomes his wife and goes to live with him in the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel of Allemonde. After a while, though, Mélisande gets the hots for Golaud’s younger half-brother Pelléas and he reciprocates her feelings. Eventually Golaud starts to suspect that there’s something going and goes out of his way to find out how far the relationship has developed. He even gets his own child, Yniold, to spy on the couple. Since it’s all getting a bit weird, Pelléas decides to leave the castle but arranges to meet Mélisande one last time before he departs. Golaud gatecrashes the meeting and kills Pelléas in a jealous rage. Mélisande eventually dies too, but not until it is revealed that she has given birth to a daughter. Golaud never really finds out “the truth”, i.e. whether Pelléas and Mélisande ever consummated their love for each other.
But of course the plot tells only part of the story. This opera is based on the symbolist play of the same title by Maurice Maeterlinck. It’s an essential component of the symbolist manifesto that art should try to represent absolute truths that can only be expressed indirectly. Consequently very little in Pelléas et Mélisande is quite what it seems on the surface. The characters are enigmatic, especially Mélisande, and the boundary between reality and imagination is often blurred to such an extent that it takes on the quality of a dream.
That may all seem very confusing, but what binds it all together is Debussy’s music which was a revelation to me: all the sensuality I associate with his music was there, but it’s far darker and more mysterious than I’d imagined in my mind’s ear before the show. I have to say that the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera under the direction of Lothar Koenigs was absolutely magnificent. This was probably the best I’ve ever heard them play – and they’ve been excellent many times I’ve heard them. They obviously rose magnificently to the challenge set by Pierre Boulez. As for the singers, I don’t think there were any weak links at all but for me the pick of them was Rebecca Bottone in the “trouser role” of the young boy, Yniold. She sang and acted quite beautifully.
I didn’t realise straightaway, but the set was based on the same metallic structure used for the WNO production of Lulu, although in this case it wasn’t festooned with body parts, although there was a pool of water around it. Come to think of it, there is quite a lot in common between the characters of Lulu and Mélisande, which may be why they did it that way. Or it might just have been to save money. Anyway, cylindrical structure in the centre of the stage was used very cleverly indeed. At one time it represented a tower, at another a well, and even when it wasn’t being used it added a touch of steampunk to the look.
I also have to mention the staging of the final scene. Mélisande’s death was depicted most movingly, wrapped in black scarves by maidservants. At the end of the performance, the rest of the cast are escorted offstage by a representation of death there’s a beautiful image of rebirth as a hand rises defiantly from a white shroud.
Congratulations to Welsh National Opera on this production. I don’t think I’m often given to exaggeration but I’d call this one a triumph!
Follow @telescoperSailing to Byzantium
Posted in Poetry with tags Artifice of eternity, Sailing to Byzantium, W.B. Yeats, William Butler Yeats on June 7, 2015 by telescoper I
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.
II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
III
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Follow @telescoperThe Frontier of Computing – Quantum Technology
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags Department of Physics & Astronomy, Quantum Computing. Quantum Technology, University of Sussex, Winfried Hensinger on June 6, 2015 by telescoperI came across this video last week and thought I would share it here. It was made by a group students and is called The Frontier of Computing – Quantum Technology. It features Prof. Winfried (“Winni”) Hensinger of the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex.
This gives me a chance to plug once more the unique Frontiers of Quantum Technology MSc Course at the University of Sussex, which seems to be attracting considerable interest this year!
Follow @telescoperHannah and her Sweets: that EdExcel Examination Question…
Posted in Education with tags EdExcel, GCSE, mathematics on June 5, 2015 by telescoperYou may or may not know that yesterday there was a bit of a Twitterstorm of students complaining about an “unfairly difficult” examination question on the GCSE Mathematics paper set by EdExcel.
This is the question:
There are n sweets in a bag. Six of the sweets are orange. The rest of the sweets are yellow.
Hannah takes a sweet from the bag. She eats the sweet. Hannah then takes at random another sweet from the bag. She eats the sweet.
The probability that Hannah eats two orange sweets is 1/3. Show that n²-n-90=0.
Not sure what all the fuss is about. Seems very straightforward. The question tells you that 6/n × 5/(n-1)=1/3 whence the equation follows by a trivial rearrangement. In fact I’m a little surprised the question didn’t go on to ask the students to solve the quadratic equation n²-n-90=0 to show that n=10…
I don’t really know what is on the GCSE Mathematics syllabus these days. In fact I never did GCSE Mathematics, I did O-level Mathematics which was quite a different thing. You can see the papers I took – way back in 1979 – here.
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Thirty years a graduate..
Posted in Biographical, Film with tags Birthday, committees, Maltese Falcon, School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, University of Sussex on June 4, 2015 by telescoperToday got off to a bad start when Radio 3 swtiched on shortly after 6am with a Concerto for Two Harpsichords. Since even one harpsichord is one more harpsichord than I can tolerate, I switched it off immediately and went back to sleep. When I finally got going I arrived at my usual bus stop (at Old Steine) to find it taped off and out of service. The wreckage of a burnt-out bus at the stop provided the obvious explanation. I therefore had to walk all the way up to St Peter’s Church to get a bus up to campus. I got here just in time to have a quick coffee and head off to an two-hour long Joint Planning Meeting with the School of Engineering and Informatics.
All things considered this wasn’t the best start to a birthday I’ve ever had, but at least I now have time for a celebratory cup of tea from my birthday mug.
Thank you to Miss Lemon for the lovely present – as regular readers of this blog (Sid and Doris Bonkers) will know – the Maltese Falcon is my favourite film.
Anyway, I only have a brief respite because this is a very busy part of the academic year. Next week we enter the time of the Final examination boards where we have to classify the degrees of graduating students. While I was lying in bed recovering from harpsichord-induced schock this morning I realised exactly 30 years ago I had just finished my own final examinations. In those days they were very intense, six three-hour papers in just three days for most students. I got off lightly because I did a theory project which I could substitute for one paper. It was still quite exhausting though. Can that really be thirty years ago?
I remember the grand plans I had to celebrate the end of my finals, especially since they coincided to closely with my birthday. When the time came, however, I was totally exhausted and just ended up having a few beers and crashing out. That’s probably what’s going to happen today too…
Anyway, must get on. Time to prepare for this afternoon’s meeting of the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences Executive Committee. Another two hours. What a way to spend a birthday…
Follow @telescoperHigher Energy Physics at the LHC
Posted in The Universe and Stuff with tags Alessandro Cerri, ATLAS Experiment, Large Hadron Collider, Supersymmetry, University of Sussex on June 3, 2015 by telescoperI’ve been busy with meetings most of the day but couldn’t resist a quick post to catch up on the exciting events at CERN. Today is the day that the Large Hadron Collider was due to start operating at its highest collision energies so far, 13 TeV. It was quite a nervous morning, and the first attempt to ramp up to this energy failed.
Here was the scene this morning in the control room of the ATLAS experiment.
This kind of photograph always reminds me of the inside of a betting shop..
However, it didn’t take long to succeed, at which point much celebration ensued. This story has a strong local connection here in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Sussex. The run coordinator for the ATLAS experiment on the Large Hadron Collider is Dr Alessandro Cerri of Sussex and he has figured prominently in today’s action. Here he is, having a glass of bubbly (purely medicinal, I’m assured) when they first achieved stable beams at the new collision scale:
He also produced this nice quote which I took from the ATLAS Twitter feed.
It is hoped that operating at 13 TeV will allow the various detectors on the Large Hadron Collider to probe the possible existence of supersysmmetric particles which have so far defied detection. On the other hand if it doesn’t find them it will cause a lot of theorists to go back to the drawing board. Incidentally I’ve been going around asking particle physicists how much they’d be willing to bet on the LHC finding evidence of supersymmetry and I can’t get any of them to make a wager with me. Any one willing to rise to the challenge please do so via the Comments Box.
Of course we all know that the main reason for increasing the LHC’s energy is not to detect supersymmetric particles, or indeed any other evidence of physics beyond the standard model that had previous been accessible. It’s to generate papers with even longer author lists…
Follow @telescoperBig Science is not the Problem – it’s Top-Down Management of Research
Posted in Finance, Science Politics, The Universe and Stuff with tags Big Science, EPSRC, Jon Butterworth, Particle Physics, STFC on June 2, 2015 by telescoperI’m very late to this because I was away at the weekend, but I couldn’t resist making a comment on a piece that appeared in the Grauniad last week entitled How can we stop big science hovering up all the research funding? That piece argues for a new system of allocating research funding to avoid all the available cash being swallowed by a few big projects. This is an argument that’s been rehearsed many times before in the context of physics and astronomy, the costs of the UK contribution to facilities such as CERN (home of the Large Hadron Collider) and the European Southern Observatory being major parts of the budget of the Science and Technology Facilities Council that often threaten to squeeze the funds available for “exploiting” these facilities – in other words for doing science. What’s different about the Guardian article however is that it focusses on genomics, which has only recently threatened to become a Big Science.
Anyway, Jon Butterworth has responded with a nice piece of his own (also in the Guardian) with which I agree quite strongly. I would however like to make a couple of comments.
First of all, I think there are two different usages of the phrase “Big Science” and we should be careful not to conflate them. The first, which particularly applies in astronomy and particle physics, is that the only way to do research in these subjects is with enormous and generally very expensive pieces of kit. For this reason, and in order to share the cost in a reasonable manner, these fields tend to be dominated by large international collaborations. While it is indeed true that the Large Hadron Collider has cost a lot of money, that money has been spent by a large number of countries over a very long time. Moreover, particle physicists argued for that way of working and collectively made it a reality. The same thing happens in astronomy: the next generation of large telescopes are all transnational affairs.
The other side of the “Big Science” coin is quite a different thing. It relates to attempts to impose a top-down organization on science when that has nothing to do with the needs of the scientific research. In other words, making scientists in big research centres when it doesn’t need to be done like that. Here I am much more sceptical of the value. All the evidence from, e.g., the Research Excellence Framework is that there is a huge amount of top-class research going on in small groups here and there, much of it extremely innovative and imaginative. It’s very hard to justify concentrating everything in huge centres that are only Big because they’ve taken killed everything that’s Small, by concentrating resources to satisfy some management fixation rather than based on the quality of the research being done. I have seen far too many attempts by funding councils, especially the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, to direct funding from the top down which, in most cases, is simply not the best way to deliver compelling science. Directed programmes rarely deliver exciting science, partly because the people directing them are not the people who actually know most about the field.
I am a fan of the first kind of Big Science, and not only for scientific reasons. I like the way it encourages us to think beyond the petty limitations of national politics, which is something that humanity desparately needs to get used to. But while Big Science can be good, forcing other science to work in Big institutes won’t necessarily make it better. In fact it could have the opposite effect, stifling the innovative approaches so often found in small groups. Small can be beautiful too.
Finally, I’d have to say that I found the Guardian article that started this piece of to be a bit mean-spirited. Scientists should be standing together not just to defend but to advance scientific research across all the disciplines rather than trying to set different kinds of researchers against each other. I feel the same way about funding the arts, actually. I’m all for more science funding, but don’t want to see the arts to be killed off to pay for it.
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In the Dark 