TIZER'S SCIENCE NEWS

[Stanley]

Report on World Service this morning about smart hearing aids which communicate with each other and enhance the ability of the wearer to locate the direction of sounds because the hearing aids themselves have software which identify the Doppler effect and reinforce it.
One of my daughters is to have a day procedure in hospital to have a cochlear implant in her dead ear. Report on World Service this morning from a man who has had one and says it was life-changing. Isn't it wonderful what advances have been made. I suspect that the one my daughter gets will be even more advanced. I look forward to hearing from her.

[Bodger]

I look forward to hearing from her.

And her from you ?

[Tizer]

There's another SARS virus about at the moment...remember the last one?

[Stanley]

It was irony Bodge! But I knew someone on here (hear) would be smart enough to pick me up on it, nice one! What a complicated language we have......

[Tizer]

BBC online news today...
`Warning over shortage of engineering graduates'
"The UK needs to increase by as much as 50% the number of science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) graduates it is creating, a report says. The study, by the Royal Academy of Engineering, says 100,000 Stem graduates are needed a year just to maintain the status quo. It argues the UK is already slipping down the international innovation league tables. The UK has dropped to eighth globally in the number of US patents registered. The report estimates 830,000 graduate-level Stem experts and 450,000 technicians will be needed by 2020. In the UK some 23,000 engineers are graduating every year. But India is producing eight times as many, and China 20 times as many. The report warns overall that the current pool of science, technology and engineering experts are already "stretched thin" and ageing rapidly. The median age of chartered engineers rises by 10 years for every 14 that pass."
More here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19760351

[Tripps]

Three of the four contestants from Lancaster University last night on University Challenge were doing post graduate courses in Eco / environmental type studies. I wonder how many are doing such courses in China / India.

[Whyperion]

The engineering area might be forgetting the real increase in apprenticeships , particulary in places like Rolls , Network Rail , EDF and so on , already 20 year olds whom have done there 4 year apprenticeship programme are mentoring the graduate entry streams that are older than them.

[Stanley]

David, I noted that as well.
Tiz, daughter Janet did an apprenticeship with Marconi as part of her training after her degree and it was a good transition from academe to hard-nosed engineering. When I was ranting about Ed's 'Technical Baccalaureate' yesterday I hadn't realised it was vocational. I'd still suggest they expand the idea to include other, more academic, subjects as well.

[Bruff]

The Nobel prize for Medicine and Physiology has been announced, and Sir John Gurdon at Cambridge shares the prize with Japan's Shina Yamanaka for their work, 40 years apart, on stem cells/cloning. Been felt for a while that they would get recognition. Sir Alec Jeffreys at Leicester will have to wait another year, but I wager he might not get one as whilst DNA fingerprinting is very clever and very useful, it hasn't really pushed forward the foundation knowledge with regards genetics, DNA, and so on.

Chemistry, Physics and Economics out during the week with Peace and Literature next. British winners? Well in Chemistry I reckon at some stage Steven V Ley, Professor of Organic Chemistry at Cambridge may get one for his work on the total synthesis of a range of natural products. As may Sir J Fraser Stoddart also an organic chemist now at Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois for his work on supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology where he has a good case for developing a whole new branch of chemistry. So why not this year? Watch this space.

I would have thought it unlikely the physics prize will go to the Higgs researchers this year given the uncertainty (I mean this in the context of the standard significance the physics community applies to the experimental verfication of their theorists), but you never know.

Economics? Well I suppose the Nobel Committee will look for the latest tyro who explains tomorrow why what they predicted yesterday didn't occur today.......

Peace and Literature, no idea.

With regards to John Gurdon, he has on his desk a fading piece of paper taken from one of his school reports:

“I believe Gurdon has ideas about becoming a scientist; on his present showing this is quite ridiculous; if he can't learn simple biological facts he would have no chance of doing the work of a specialist, and it would be a sheer waste of time, both on his part and of those who would have to teach him.”

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Richard, I heard him talking about that school report on R4 yesterday. I think he was allowing himself a measure of quiet satisfaction and he deserves it.
I also heard the piece on Voyager perhaps having exited the Solar System. (LINK) They were saying that the power source can't last much longer and they were extracting all the telemetry they could before it vanishes. Wonderful when you think how far away it is now and the age of the equipment.

[Bruff]

Physics Nobel goes to the Frenchman Serge Haroche at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris and the American David Wineland at the National Standards and Technology Institute at the U of Colorado at Boulder, for their work on quantum optics which opens the door to quantum computing applications. They join the pantheon of the Nobel winners most remember: Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr. The great physicists.

Nothing for the Higgs folk as suspected.

Question: which small Yorkshire town has produced two of the UK's Nobel Prize winners, attending the same school and being taught maths by the same teacher?

Richard Broughton

[PanBiker]

Giggleswick? only a guess.

[Bruff]

Nope. I'll give folk 'till tomorrow morning....

Richard Broughton

[Tizer]

I've cheated and searched on the Web to find the answer and I won't give the game away, but I can add that a third scientist from the same town has a law in nuclear physics named after him and his colleague.

[Stanley]

Mystery objects seems to be catching on. I haven't cheated and haven't the faintest idea..... I remember Big Harry explaining quantum computing to me many years ago. He told me that one of these days our computers would be bought as a powder we would mix with water and pour the gel into a container then stick the wires in and watch it grow into a brain. I still believe him.....
I see that part of the kilometre square array is to be built in WA. Janet will be excited, she has been working on the programming as part of the team. I forget how big she said the capacity of the computer was, all I know is that it is so big it's incomprehensible.

[PanBiker]

How about Sedbergh? I know it's in Cumbria (made up name) but really in the West Riding according to Danelaw.

[EileenDavid]

Sedbergh I have friends who have caravan's there. Seems the ruling council will only let them have green coloured ones. I was sure they told me it was on the North Yorkshire moors on the border of Cumbria. Eileen

[PanBiker]

Sedbergh was moved into the pseudo county of Cumbria (formed from bits of Cumberland, Westmorland, Lancashire and Yorkshire) created in order for Ted Heath to win the election back in 1974. It was formerly in the West Riding of Yorkshire the same as Barlick. It now sits in the Yorkshire Dales National Park but is in the aforementioned county for administration purposes as we are in Lancashire. I'm fairly sure that the natives of Sedergh know exactly where they come from despite what the Boundary Commission says.

[EileenDavid]

Thanks for that Ian I thought my friends had mentioned Yorkshire. Eileen

[Tizer]

(Reuters, 10 October 2012) - "Two American scientists won the 2012 Nobel Prize for chemistry on Wednesday for research into how cells respond to external stimuli that is helping to develop better drugs to fight diseases such as diabetes, cancer and depression. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the 8 million crown ($1.2 million) prize went to Robert Lefkowitz, 69, and Brian Kobilka, 57, for discovering the inner workings of G-protein-coupled receptors, which allow cells to respond to chemical messages such as adrenaline rushes."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/ ... EN20121010

[Stanley]

Nobel certainly put the profits made from manufacturing explosives to good use. I saw the report but of course didn't understand exactly what it is they have been commended for....
Square kilometre array in WA. Janet is part of the programming team. That'll keep her quiet!

[Bruff]

The answer to the question I posed is Todmorden.

The winners were, for physics (1951) Sir John Cockcroft for his work with Ernest Walton in spitting the atomic nucleus. And then for chemistry, Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson (1973) for his work on organometallic chemistry and cataysis.

They both attended Todmorden Secondary School and were taught physics (not maths as I thought) by one Luke Sutcliffe.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

I got my copy of 'Cloth Caps and Cricket Crazy' out. All good Todmorden names!

[Stanley]

Right, I haven't looked on the web. Here's a question for the brain-boxes: What's the terminal velocity for a body dropped from 28 miles high? I think you can see where I am going with this one!

[Big Kev]

Right, I haven't looked on the web. Here's a question for the brain-boxes: What's the terminal velocity for a body dropped from 28 miles high? I think you can see where I am going with this one!

Before I Google it; I thought it was around 120mph for a "normal" jump from an aeroplane. With regard to 28 miles up I would imagine it would be a lot faster...