May 2012 | Facts and Info from the European Physical Society | e-EPS
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Promote your scientific heritage!

Dear Readers,

The world over, organisations like UNESCO can be seen declaring sites, buildings, monuments and gardens as the cultural or natural heritage of humankind. We are convinced that the same should apply to our scientific heritage – since science is a fundamental part of our culture. Inspired by a similar initiative of the American Physical Society, the European Physical Society [EPS] Historic Site initiative will take care of the survey of the European territory.

On 20 April, in Rome, the first Italian EPS Historic Site was declared and established: the fountain at the ancient physics institute on Panisperna Street, where Enrico Fermi carried out his fundamental research in the 1930s. A commemorative plate was unveiled at the site by the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano. The citation read:

“Using the water of the goldfish fountain of his Institute, Enrico Fermi established for the first time, in the afternoon of 22 October 1934, the crucial role of hydrogenous substances on neutron induced radioactivity, thus opening the way to the use of slow neutrons in nuclear fission chain reactions.” ...

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Hungarian Centre wins CERN IT contract

The Wigner Research Centre for Physics, in Budapest, secured a contract to host an extension to the CERN data centre earlier this month. The Wigner centre will accommodate CERN equipment which will boost both the capabilities and the security of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid .

“Installing computing capacity at the Wigner Centre allows us to power additional equipment, as well as secure our operations, due to the remote nature of the resources” said Frédéric Hemmer, the head of CERN’s IT Department.

“For example: should we suffer a prolonged power cut at CERN we will be able to transfer critical functions to the Wigner Centre, mitigating the risk of having all of Tier-0 in one location.”

Tier-0 – the heart of the Grid, based at CERN – currently provides around 30 petabytes of data storage, and includes the majority of the 65,000 processing cores hosted in the CERN computer centre. The Grid is available to over 8,000 scientists who work on the LHC experiments, providing distributed computing facilities and large-scale data storage...

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Bologna Process Report

“The European Higher Education Area in 2012: Bologna Process Implementation Report” was published at the end of last month. The report both details how the higher education landscape in 2012 has been affected by the Bologna Process and the current state of process implementation from various perspectives...

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Enrico Fermi fountain designated EPS Historic Site

The “Second Conference of Fermi Centre Projects” took place on 19-20 April this year in Rome, Italy, in the temporary headquarters of the Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche “Enrico Fermi”...

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Johanna Stachel new DPG president

Johanna Stachel took office as president of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft [DPG] on 16 March this year. Stachel, a professor of experimental physics at the University of Heidelberg, is the first female physicist to head the DPG since its founding in 1845...

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Asian experiments unlock neutrino oscillation mystery

Two reactor experiments, China’s Daya Bay and Korea’s RENO, have made the best measurement of the neutrino mixing angle, an essential property for neutrino research...

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CERN tech to foster new UK businesses with STFC

Small UK companies will be turning ground-breaking CERN research into real-world technological applications, through a new collaboration between the European research laboratory and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council [STFC]...

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International Particle Physics Outreach Group meeting

The European Particle Physics Outreach Group [EPPOG] was established 15 years ago, under the joint auspices of the European Committee for Future Accelerators and the European Physical Society’s High Energy Particle Physics Board...

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Particle physics outreach database launched by IPPOG

A database of resources and tools for particle physics education and outreach has been published by the International Particle Physics Outreach Group12:40 28/06/2012...

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Philippe Grangier receives Charles H. Townes award

Philippe Grangier has been awarded the Charles H. Townes award of the Optical Society of America, in recognition of his research in fundamental quantum optics...

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Nominations open for 2013 Boltzmann Award

Nominations are open for the Boltzmann Award, of the Commission on Statistical Physics [C3] of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics [IUPAP]. The prize is given in commemoration of outstanding achievements in statistical physics…

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Call for 2013 IUPAP C10 Young Scientist Prize

Nominations are now open for the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize for the Commission on the Structure and Dynamics of Condensed Matter [C10]. The prize, which is given annually, is presented in recognition of exceptional achievement and future promise in the study of the structure and dynamics of condensed matter by scientists at a relatively junior stage of their career...

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Call for 2012 European Latsis Prize in Mathematics

Nominations are open for the European Latsis Prize 2012. This year, the prize will be given in the field of Mathematics, to an individual scientist or group in recognition of innovative, beneficial and outstanding research.

The prize, which values at 100,000 CHF, is given by the Latsis Foundation, through the European Science Foundation...

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EPL Editor in Chief

Position: Editor in Chief, EPL
Company: European Physical Society
Location: France

Nominations are now open for the position of Editor in Chief of EPL. EPL – formerly Europhysics Letters – is a leading global letters journal, owned and published by a consortium of 17 physical societies from across Europe. The term of office of the new Editor in Chief will be three and a half years, commencing from March 2013...

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STEPS TWO results published on new website

The Stakeholders Tune European Physics Studies Two [STEPS TWO] programme has launches a new “dissemination” website. The site contains information on the STEPS TWO outcomes, results and recommendations, for public consumption...

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Featured in EPL

Recent highlights from EPL:

Demographic noise can lead to the spontaneous formation of species

Fluctuations, linear response and heat flux of an aging system

The game of go as a complex network

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International Particle Accelerator Conference

The third International Particle Accelerator Conference [IPAC'12] is being held in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 20-25 May this year. The conference aims to be a truly international event...

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Deep Ocean Cabled Observatories workshop

The “Deep Ocean Cabled Observatories” workshop will be held at NIKHEF, in Amsterdam, on 24-25 May this year...

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Quantum School

The Advanced School on Quantum Foundations and Open Quantum Systems will be held between 16-28 July this year, at the Tropical Hotel Tambaú, in João Pessoa, Brazil. The event aims to train young researchers and encourage the exchange of knowledge across various research areas...

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EPS-SIF School on Energy – Course 1

The first course of the Joint EPS-SIF International School on Energy – entitled “New strategies for energy generation, conversion and storage” – will be held between 30 July and 4 August this year...

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Quantum Fluids and Solids 2012

The 2012 International Conference on Quantum Fluids and Solids [QFS2012] will be held on 15-21 August this year, at Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom...

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Cryocourse 2012

Cryocourse 2012 will be held between 9-20 September this year in Heidelberg, Germany, split between the locations of the Schöntal Monastery, for initial theoretic lectures, and the Kirchhoff-Institute for Physics...

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Symposium on Strategy for Particle Physics

The CERN Council Open Symposium on the European Strategy for Particle Physics will be held in Kraków, Poland, on 10-12 September this year...

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Weak Protein-Ligand Interactions

The “Weak Protein-Ligand Interactions: New Horizons in Biophysics and Cell Biology” thematic meeting of the Biophysical Society will be held in Beijing, China, on 14-18 October this year...

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NANOMETA 2013

The 4th International Topical Meeting on Nanophotonics and Metamaterials [NANOMETA 2013] will be held at the Seefeld ski resort in Tirol, Austria, on 3-6 January. The event aims to bring together the materials, nanotechnology and photonics research communities to discuss recent developments and results within their fields...

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