STFC grants announcement

STFC have posted something on their website about grants.

I only saw this as a consequence of my daily perusal of Paul Crowther's webpage, I wonder have the people who are/might be affected sent something directly to inform them?

Anyway, here is what it says:

STFC Council examined progress of its current science and technology prioritisation exercise at a strategy session on 21 and 22 September. Without prejudging the outcome of the prioritisation, Council agreed that prudent financial management required a re-examination of upcoming grants.

Council therefore agreed that new grants will be issued only to October 2010 in the first instance. This temporary policy is in place pending the outcome of the prioritisation exercise, expected in the New Year.

What does this mean?

Does this affect grants that are currently being decided on to be announced around Christmas?
What about grants awarded last year but were delayed until now (st STFC's request)?
What does it mean for rolling grants (makes them sort of pointless really)?

who stole the sunshine?

Turned cloudy today, rained last night but stayed fine today. Some promising breaks in the cloud hint at sunny weather later. No radar for me today but exciting ground breaking UK experiments are currently underway. The heating facility is being used to probe the lower ionosphere using partial reflection. Magnetospheric radar, mesospheric radar, ionospheric heating - is there anything that field of antennas cannot do?


My radar run yesterday was not so hot. Things were very quiet and all I really got was a nice quiet, solar illuminated ionosphere. Nothing to help me with my work but a couple of cool things showed up in the data anyway. The plot to the right shows the estimated electron density provided by the VHF radar.
You can see how the electron concentration is highest at about 200 km (F-layer) and decreases with descending altitude until it disappears below ~90 km (D-layer); the radar is just not sensitive enough to pick out the much lower electron density below there.

If you look closely from ~12:45 UT you can see an undulation in the data, noticeable in the bit coloured green. This looks like gravity waves to me (not to be confused with gravitational waves), which are generated in the troposphere and are important for transferring energy and momentum to the mesosphere. Caused by airflow over mountains or weather fronts, these disturbances are called gravity waves since gravity acts as the restoring force that causes the oscillation.

Another interesting feature is the appearance of PMSE layers - polar mesosphere summer echoes). The most obvious is around 14:00 UT where there are strong radar echoes. These are not true estimates of the electron density, rather they are caused by coherent scatter where more power is returned to the radar giving the false impression of much higher electron density. The coherent scatter is actually from irregularities with spacing of half the radar wavelength (in this case about 70cm). PMSE are caused by the presence of electrically charged ice particles - the mesopause is very cold so water vapour freezes. These same ice particles cause noctilucent clouds.

So there may be something useful in that data even if not for me.

least surprising headline

I was wondering about this on Sunday night.

Schumacher would consider return

Michael Schumacher is not ruling out the possibility of standing in for injured Ferrari driver Felipe Massa.

In actuality I think it unlikely that he will return to stand in for Massa. At the risk of sounding somewhat mercenary Ferrari would be better off trying out someone new (to them at least). They have to think to the future and at the moment that might not include having Massa in a car again.

Norway in Summer

Well, its campaign time and here I am sat in the north of Norway. Except rather than snow, ice and rain I can see sunshine and mountains of green. It makes a refreshing change.

I arrived yesterday evening into lovely sunshine and warm temperatures, somewhat removed from the cold and snow into which I normally arrive.

The drive from the airport to the radar site was very picturesque and I did not have to worry about icy roads and so could relax and enjoy it.


It was almost enough to wipe away the pains of a 6am start followed by a three leg journey incorporating a high speed dash through Oslo airport to make my final connection. I was pleasantly surprised to find my luggage on the conveyor when I arrived.

I was even more pleasantly surprised to be fed reindeer when I got to the site. Good times.

This is the first time I have been abroad since my daughter was born and I am already missing her terribly. I just hope that we take some good measurements and get some nice results from this campaign to make up for being away from home.

That said I am not terribly hopeful.

I am not here looking for aurora this time. Instead I am looking for the signature of very high energy electrons. These relativistic electrons precipitate from the magnetosphere and deposit energy in the lower D-region (or even deeper). They can have significant effects on the chemistry of that part of the atmosphere.

The radar up here is capable of detecting the tell-tale signs of these electrons and provide a means of measuring the precipitation spectrum (that is the number flux and energy of the elctrons). This is not so easy to measure in space since you want to only sample the portion of the electron population that is going into the atmosphere plus you have the difficulty of a satellite moving through the region of interest creating temporal-spatial ambiguities. From the ground we can resolve those somehwat.

One of the advantages we have over astronomers using optical telescopes is that our radars are not dependent on clear skies and we can operate happily in the daytime. However we have our own limitations; whereas chances are that astronomers can go back to the same object over and over and repeat measurements, we are working in a massively dynamic system that disallows that. No two precipitation events are identical and are highly dependent on how the magnetosphere is being driven.

The problem I have is that my timing sucks., I had hoped to catch a period of high solar wind speed, a phenomenon that enhances driving of the magnetosphere and can lead to increased relativistic electron precipitation. The image above (linking to Spaceweather.com) shows the Sun in extreme UV as seen by SOHO. What I needed was the dark spot in the upper middle (a coronal hole) to be slightly further around to the right as that would mean the solar wind burst I needed would be on its way.

I may yet get lucky for Thursday and Friday...

Campaign time

I'm off to Norway next week. Sitting and watching radar data might inspire me to write some more. Lots to write about including various consultations.

Cool gadget

Now I'm not normally a huge gadget person and I don't even own an iPhone but this gadget I came across today stuck me as such a brilliantly simple and elegant solution. It's called the Aircurve and it amplifies the sound from an iPhone by 10 dB WITHOUT needing electricity.

UK science policy

The transcript for the latest IUSS evidence session on "Putting Science and Engineering at the Heart of Government Policy" is now available. This is coupled with Science Question time and makes interesting reading.

The issue of the debate over the future of science policy in the UK was, of course, discussed. The committee was a bit confused over statements made by the science minister about a need for debate and those of John Denham that effectively said the debate was over. I was very confused by this as well and I cannot say that my confusion has been resolved.

You do seem to get a different answer to the same question depending on who you ask in DIUS, yet they say that the answers are the same and everyone is in agreement. I must be missing something there, but inspection of the transcript sheds no further light. Baffling!

Anyway, Paul Drayson wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian, 'Built on Brainpower', which led to a very noteworthy letter from Professor George Efstathiou in response. I reproduce said letter below:

Lord Drayson argues that the government is committed to funding curiosity-driven research. He needs to talk to the chairman (Peter Warry) and chief executive (Keith Mason) of the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Their message, both to me in person and to the scientific community, has been unambiguous - the government, and the Treasury in particular, are interested only in new projects that have direct economic impact. It doesn't matter if we have the greatest ideas for projects to study the big bang or the properties of fundamental particles; these will fall on deaf ears unless we can articulate clearly the resulting "economic benefits".

Lord Drayson needs to tackle this evident lack of communication between government and the research councils.
Professor George Efstathiou
University of Cambridge

There is a clear and continuing problem with science in the UK and it stems from the communication from government, through the upper reaches of DIUS to the interaction with the research council and thence to the scientific community.

Hostility that exists toward the whole circus surrounding 'economic impact' is not just because academics live in their ivory towers and want to be left alone (some do - not all), it is because we constantly get mixed messages about how EI should or does work in terms of effects on funding decisions. Until there is an effort for everyone to get 'on-message' (whatever that message might be) then confusion and distrust will continue. I am far from convinced the the current STFC CEO is capable of ending this distrust as I am not convinced that he knows what the government really wants even as he itches to enact their decisions.

There is nothing you can do when you are next in line...

Since my last post there has been a push from European scientists for Austria to reverse its decision to pull out of CERN. Indeed this seems to have worked and Austria are now back in.

What is interesting is that there does seem to have been a worry about a possible domino effect. Reassuring words from our very own STFC:

A spokeswoman for the Science and Technology Facilities Council said: "The STFC, on behalf of the UK, has no plans to pull out of Cern."

I do actually believe them. It makes little sense for the UK to pull out of CERN at the moment, but then I'm not convinced that 'sense' has any place in decision making. I still think that the particle physicists need to be (and I am sure that they are) looking ahead to a couple of years down the line when pulling out of CERN may look more attractive to STFC.


Of course, little alarm bells in the cynical portion of my brain go off when I see phrases like

'has no plans'

This is a beautiful weasel phrase employed by politicians down the ages. It means nothing.

"Today we have no plans to do X", yet tomorrow we find that X is done. Just because you do not plan to do something, it does not mean that plans cannot be drawn up and something done. Must respond to the changing landscape you know.

So if ever you hear or read , "we have no plans to..." don't get too comfortable.



ps. bonus points for getting the reference in the title.

One data point does not make a trend

... but if one thinks about the context it can make one nervous that it could be the start of one.

h/t telescoper

Austria has announced that it is pulling out of CERN. This will lead to an increase in costs for the remaining members, not much in the great scheme of things but in a time of financial difficulty it will be a bit of a blow in some areas.

If I were a particle physicist in the UK I would be getting nervous now. Government wants more return on its science spending and the Research Councils, rather than operating at arms-length from government (see this article) are bending over backwards to accomodate wishes. We can debate the role of RCUK until the cows come home but the fact of the matter is (whether we like it or not and Haldane be damned) they are now a defacto branch of government and strongly subject to policy decisions. One such decision is the need to see economic impact.

Now I am sure the PP folks have many excellent examples of how their work influences the economy, but they have to be careful in considering whether such things benefit the UK economy. There is a focus on UK leadership as a requirement for funding how does this translate to projects like CERN?

It is not outside the realms of possibility that some might see CERN as a luxury in these times and Austria's pull-out as a clarion call.

[UPDATE: Do I think that the UK will rush to pull out of CERN? No. Do I think that Austria's pull out has got some people thinking? Yes. Do I think that said people would push for a CERN pull-out? No. At least not until someone else folds out.]

In general I fear that if we do not progress carefully in terms of science policy we will in fact not be progressing at all.

[UPDATE: The thing that sets alarm bells ringing in my head is Austria's rationale for pulling out. I actually understand why they are doing so given the figures involved (70% of their international science budget) and their desire to be involved in other projects. The thing is that here in the UK we hear that we should do less things, but do them better. At the same time there is a drive towards specific areas of scientific inquiry (driven by government policy). Factor in that the science minister has been talking up space as the next big thing for the UK and one starts to wonder what the new big science questions will be...]

Woohoo!

Women 'fight off disease better'

so says the BBC.

Hurrah, Man flu is not all in the head, we can't help it because we are simply the weaker sex!

My ego will take that as a result if it means an extra day moping about the house without having to do work.