Living in the Real World

Storm in a Teacup - some optimism?

2011-02-18T11:00:00.010Z

So the big Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) hit and generated... no aurora over the UK.
So with all the commentary and coverage why did we not see aurora?

As my colleague Jim Wild said on Twitter:

Some media coverage suggested that #northernlights were a certainty last night - not the case! But it was the best chance for a few years!

Why were some optimistic about the chances (including me) and why did we not see anything?

It all comes down to how the CME hit the Earth's magnetosphere. The CME is a large cloud of plasma (electrons and ions) that travels through the solar wind (also a plasma). Besides the particles it also carries with it a magnetic field and this is the important bit.

If that magnetic field is orientated with a significant component pointing southward, something cool can happen when the CME reaches the Earth: the magnetic field from the CME can merge or 'reconnect' with the Earth's magnetosphere.

Reconnection allows energy and matter to transfer from the CME into the magnetosphere. In general the stronger the southward magnetic field of the CME, the stronger the reconnection. Another factor is the speed of the CME; the higher the speed, the bigger the impact and also the stronger the interaction.
Of course the magnetic field in a CME can be very complex, but sometimes we see a nice simple pattern with the field forming a great, closed loop such that for a time the field points north(south) before flipping south(north). Sometimes it is just much more complicated than that - this stuff isn't easy you know.

So what happened with the CME today?

Let's look at the data from ACE, a solar wind monitor sat upstream of the Earth:

These data are provided in real time by the Space Weather Prediction Center, NOAA.

The top panel shows the magnetic field strength (white) and the north-south magnetic field component (red). Straight away we can see that the field strength went up (which is good) but that most of that was pointed northwards (positive), there were a couple of little dips below zero (southward) but you really need it to stay negative for about 40-60 minutes even to generate decent auroral displays at high latitudes.

The fourth plot down is the solar wind speed (yellow). This jumped from a very slow 350km/s to a moderately fast 500km/s when the CME passed ACE. This is not really fast in the great scheme of things; the big storm in 2003 that produced aurora over Boulder, Colorado (USA), was triggered by a CME moving at over 1000 km/s. When Aurora was visible over Lancaster UK in January 2005, the CME was moving at over 800 km/s.

basically, in my opinion, this CME was
a) not moving fast enough
b) did not have enough southward magnetic field

to generate a good display over most of the UK.

Anyway, it was cloudy.

However. Keep on eye on the activity levels as something a bit funny is happening. The speed has ramped up (though its a bit all over the place - instrumental problem?) to close to 700 km/s and the fact there has not been much in the way of southward field makes me wonder if that may be yet to come (though the total field strength is dropping).

So, maybe there might still be some aurora later on tonight if we are lucky.

Of course the really nice thing about this event is that its an indicator of things to come. We are cruising towards solar maximum and things on the Sun are hotting up after a long solar minimum. Chances of UK aurora are going up all the time.

Postscript(3:44pm): A good article for Channel 4 news.
For about 3 hours from 12:30 today the magnetic field in the solar wind (or Interplanetary Magnetic Field) has been negative (add about 40 mins for travel time from ACE).

It started off at around -10 nT before dropping steadily to zero. This was probably enough to trigger some decent activity at higher latitudes but I doubt it will stretch too far south.

So if you are at high latitudes with clear skies and in a suitable time zone (i.e. night) go outside and have a look.

For those of us in the UK, the IMF is still a teensy bit southward and so who knows maybe if things freshen up again we might still get lucky later. Chances are slim though.

Storm or no storm?

2011-02-17T20:45:00.008Z

Solar flares and the possibility of seeing the Aurora Borealis over the UK have been in the news today. It stems from the fact that on Tuesday (at about 2am) we had the biggest solar flare that we have had for something like 4 years. It was what we call an X-class X-ray flare. that means the energy flux was greater than 0.001 Watts per square metre. You can see the recent flare on the plot below, which is courtesy of the excellent Space Weather Prediction Center, part of NOAA.

From the right-hand scale you can see it tipped over into the X-class band and it was what we would call an X2 flare.

Associated with this flare was a CME - a coronal mass ejection. This big magnetic cloud is currently travelling through interplanetary space and our best guess is that it is heading straight towards Earth. If and when it hits it could trigger a geomagnetic storm. If the CME has a large southward magnetic field component it might lead to conditions ripe for aurora over mid-latitudes (i.e. the UK).

Note the important words in italics.

It is great that the Sun is being active again as we head up towards the next solar maximum. The long solar minimum was pretty geophysically interesting but at the same time its nice to have a chance of seeing aurora at mid-latitudes; and chances of doing so do go up at solar max.

Clearly it is nice that the aurora is getting a mention in the media but I have been a leeetle bit concerned about some of the coverage. I am concerned (rightly or wrongly) that the impression is that we will see some aurora. To be sure this is the best chance for quite some time and it is an encouraging event but it is not a foregone conclusion. For example take the title of this BBC news story

Aurora Borealis to light up the night sky

The story itself is a bit more balanced but the headline is worrying. On the other hand, here is a really good, balanced story by Paul Rincon, also on the BBC.

Now as of yet the CME from the X2 flare has not hit and so the chances for aurora viewing are still there and still reasonable. Though if it hits in the morning, as solar storm watch predicts, we have to hope that the auroral oval stays at mid-latitudes for quite a few hours.

This may be a bit of a tall order.

Postscript: it is not a strictly linear relationship but it is worth bearing in mind that the last time aurora was visible over the north of England it followed an X7 flare. So I suspect that the best place to see aurora in the UK will be Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Jack Horkheimer RIP

2010-08-21T23:03:00.003+01:00

After finishing our PhDs Em and I were fortunate enough to find positions at the same institute - no mean feat as anyone who has to contemplate the 'two-body problem' will know. Furthermore we got postdoctoral fellowships at the High Altitude Observatory (NCAR) in Boulder, USA, one of the best towns to work in if you study solar-terrestrial physics or space plasma physics.

We spent a very happy two years in Boulder and as you do we settled into a series of routines, one of which was Saturday nights. This usually entailed doing something out and about in the early evening before getting home in time for re-runs of Dr Who on PBS at 11ish. The last act in that routine was catching a curious little show called "Star Gazer", presented by the director of Miami's Space Transit Planetarium, jack Horkheimer. You should check out the shows on YouTube.

I cannot say I admired it from the start, I watched the first one with horrifed fascination, finding his style somewhat jarring; purely a matter of personal taste. I kept watching though and his enthusiasm was clear to see. By the time I left the States to return to the UK I missed the show.

Sadly I have just learned that Jack Horkheimer died on Friday at the age of 72. I am sure he will sorely missed by the many who enjoyed his easily accessable show that gave anyone the tips they needed to see something new in the night sky. Hopefully everyone will "keep looking up"

A Liberal dilemma

2010-05-10T21:58:00.000+01:00

I suspect that this post will be overtaken by events.

In case you missed it the election has happened; as a consequence I have lots to rant about for now that can wait a short while. In the meantime I have a few thought that need ordering and I thought I would do it here where everyone can point and laugh.

Also I'm probably not saying anything new given the chatter all over the interwebs but, hey, its my blog...

At the moment the Lib Dems have been in negotiations with the Conservatives to form either a coalition government or to offer support to prevent a no confidence vote in a minority Tory government. They have also been talking to Labour, which may have prompted Gordon Brown to announce his resignation in an attempt to remove one obstacle to a coalition.

Of course, as everyone knows by now even if the Lib Dems form an alliance with Labour they will not form a majority of seats. To do that they need to include virtually everyone else who isn't a conservative. This may not be appealing to many as it sounds quite unstable, with lots of different priorities pulling in different directions and far too many chances for individual parties (I'm looking at you SNP) to spit the dummy if they don't get what they want.

So what to do? It is a tricky one.

Scenario 1:
Tories form a minority government with Lib Dems preventing a vote of no confidence. Any legislation will then stand or fail on each vote.

Somewhat attractive.

I predict such a government will last less than 12 months. Again, somewhat attractive because then Dr Evan Harris will get a pop at taking his seat back a lot sooner than the run of a full parliament.

Scenario 2:
Tories form a coalition government with the Lib Dems. Not so outlandish as some are whining about because their are regions of overlap with the Conservative policies (go read the manifestos or at least the BBC website).

A big sticking point is PR since the Conservatives really do not want it. Not at all. If PR is introduced they are not likely to fair well out of it (at least in the short term) whereas they do quite well under FPTP. Of course if they actually reformed aspects of their stance they could do better.

The Tories have offered a referendum on AV - but this is unlikely to pacify many who want PR. Plus its an underhanded offer - the government will offer a referendum and when the time comes the whole right wing press will fight it tooth and nail. Have I mentioned that the Tories don't want PR?

You may think that with only a third of the electorate supporting them such tactics won't work but there is no guarantee that the Labour supporters will support PR, especially with some well chosen headlines suggesting Labour would do poorly from it. Tribalism is powerful (and coming from the north-west of England I know that it does exist even if its not nice to say it) and can (and does) overrule good sense.

I'm not sure I see such a marriage as stable since so many grass roots Lib Dems are opposed. I give it 18 months unless Nick Clegg is very persuasive. My personal view is that I want complete electoral reform, but at the moment I want decent economic policies to push us through the next couple of years. That has to be a priority.

But what happens then?

If the coalition crumbles quickly and Nick Clegg can't convince his supporters that the Lib Dems have benefitted I see a withering of support in the next election, especially if Labour continue on their Damascus-like conversion to electoral reform. People are fickle. If Nick can keep it together they could do very well out of it, especially if they get good cabinet positions and have a visible profile.

Plus they have the best combined logo (bird sat in tree - thanks BBC).

Scenario 3:
As I mentioned above, Labour has developed a love for electoral reform and are offering the Lib Dems AV with a referendum on PR to follow. Must be tempting for the rank and file. Especially those who feel dirty even thinking about the Conervatives. Of course there will have to be big concessions to the supporting parties and that is likely to be requests for reduced cuts to Scotland, NI and Wales. Given that major spending cuts are very likely and there will be lots of pain to go around this will be a huge wedge issue if the pain is seen to be spread unevenly.

Such a union has already been christened a coalition of the defeated and that term will haunt it as long as it lasts. Now plenty of Lib Dems like the idea - a progressive coalition. Sadly I think it will damage the Lib Dems most in the long term. Holding the coalition together will be hard. Very hard. And when it collapses it could push the Lib Dem vote south for a very long time as people will turn to Labour to try and ensure the defeat of a Tory government. I'm not sure how much good could come from this union for the Lib Dems except if they can rush through PR before it all collapses. I just don't think it will last more than a year and I don't think that is enough time as there are more pressing priorities.

Quite frankly given the unpopular decisions that the next Government will have to make I'm not sure why anyone wants to be in it. I doubt that even under normal circumstances such a government would last more than one term. Anyway, my random thoughts on the issue.

I should write something

2010-05-07T00:01:00.002+01:00

I should write something.

Maybe something about Formula 1.

Maybe something about science.

Maybe something about the election.

Or, maybe, just maybe, I should get on with some work

whither STFC? - science board

2010-03-15T22:32:00.005Z

The changes to the structure of STFC announced by Lord Drayson have implications for the operations and management of the funding agency that the STFC council might like to consider.

To recap, one of the proposals announced in the Drayson-Stirling fix is the manner in which the UK national facilities will be funded. RCUK and STFC will work to determine the budget required to operate the national facilities (e.g. Diamond) across a whole comprehensive spending review (CSR) period*. This money will then be allocated to STFC to manage those facilities and will be a separate pot from the cash needed to fund research in astronomy, particle physics and nuclear physics. Thus there will be no 'tensioning' between these two areas on a day to day (or at least annual budget) basis - any 'tensioning' will occur within BIS once every CSR. This will provide stability (though of course, not necessarily any more money) for the PPAN side of STFC.

Now we get to the meat of the issue.

My understanding of the way in which STFC works (hah!) is that PPAN and PALS are responsible for their particular areas, representing the communities, and feed up to science board (see here). It is the role of science board to merge the inputs from PPAN and PALS to develop advice to STFC council on the overall programme. With the new change to STFC structure, particularly with the removal of the need to balance PALS versus PPAN within STFC, science board would appear to be obsolete.

Science board is now really just dead wood; a layer of bureaucracy within the STFC structure who that is no longer required. The STFC programme, as far as the PALS side of things, will be set once every CSR, STFC will simply administer the process, there is no need for a body to balance PALS with PPAN anymore.

Those on science board can be thanked for their hard work and then it can be dissolved. Instead PPAN could report directly to council alongside whoever is in charge of the national facilities administration. This has the advantage of bringing council much closer to one of the areas within its remit and will remove some of the filters that lead to the watering down of the 'bottom-up' strategy approach. This will also be much more efficient and will make some savings since expenses will be reduced and less meetings with associated costs in man-hours of staff.

I just do not see the point in retaining science board now. I should point out that this is not a critique of science board members; whether they did their jobs properly or not is completely irrelevant.

Quite simply there is no role for science board in its current incarnation in the new STFC. Indeed I cannot see why two layers of bureaucracy are required now when one would do the trick; to be seen to cut any costs in the current climate must surely be a good thing, especially when doing so would not adversely affect the funding of science within STFC.

I hope that Michael Stirling and the other members of STFC council are already thinking about this.

*note this does not mean that enough money will be provided to operate those facilities at 100% capacity - only that some agreement will be reached on the appropriate level at each new CSR.

Also the reason I tend to use ' ' around the word 'tension' is because I think it is an example of god-awful management speak that has crept into use in this whole debacle and I'd rather not use it except for the fact I am too lazy to pick my words carefully. Tension is a perfectly fine word and pitting PALS against PPAN science certainly led to tension but that's not quite the same thing.

Oh and if you see me using the phrase 'going forward' feel free to castigate me!

STFC fix - the flaws

2010-03-15T00:18:00.006Z

[update - to be fair on re-reading I have decided that 'flaws' is perhaps the wrong word. Rather these are issues to be dealt with]

As I said in my last post the proposed fix to STFC's continuing woes contain a number of potential flaws that we must guard against.

First of all, on a personal note I am not totally convinced that keeping the atsronomy, particle physics and nuclear physics grants with STFC was the right move. I know I am in a minority here so I won't push the point. I just wonder if it would have been better for physics overall to move much of the fundamental stuff into a single funding agency. EPSRC may not have rolling grants but they do have platform grants, plus the way things are going one has to wonder how long STFC will have rolling grants.

More substantively:
The aim to remove the uncertainty associated with paying international subscriptions in non-sterling is laudable. However it is important to note that the public commitment to doing this so far extends to:

BIS is working closely with the Bank of England on how to reduce the exposure of the STFC.

This tells us that as of yet there is no fix in place. They ARE trying to find one and working with the bank of England to achieve that and so we can applaud their effort. At the same time we should watch developments closely. I have to assume that the simple step of transferring responsibility to the Treasury was not so simple and/or undesirable at some level.

If responsibility for the ESA subscription is moved to the new space agency that would be a good step to protect the research grants. However, the devil with that will be in the detail; where is the budget for HMSA* going to come from? Will this lie within the existing science budget ringfence and as such can we expect a squeeze on the existing science? Will HMSA take over funding of certain areas of space science? This could be a good thing and eminently sensible but it is essential to balance any transfer of funds and make sure it is spent on what it was supposed to be spent on.

We just do not know what will happen with the space agency but an announcement will come soon and I hope that will clarify things.

The biggest advantage could also be the biggest disadvantage.

'Tensioning' large national facilities (such as Diamond and ISIS) against the astro, pp and np research grants was a difficult balancing act. On the one hand we should use these facilities to maximise their potential; on the other hand the resultant tension curtailed new science and limited exploitation of fantastic astro and pp facilities (not to mention the complete devastation of nuclear). The results of that 'tensioning' have left the PPAN community lurching onwards and with the best will in the world, the 'fix' has done nothing to alleviate that problem, only money can do that (roll on next CSR).

So the Drayson-Stirling fix will cut out that day-to-day 'tension' by allocating the money to pay for the national facilities at the outset. Great, there will be no squeezing of the research grants in order to pay for the facilities, primarily used by different disciplines. Yet what this really does is take the power to determine the balance between PALS and PPAN away from STFC and hand it to BIS; plus the balance will be determined once every CSR rather than on an annual rolling basis. This is not necessarily a bad thing but it does change the ball game somewhat. To put it simply:

National facilities cannot pinch money from astro/pp/np grants, but by the same score, the grants cannot pinch money from the national facilities.

In the past STFC would make the case to government for funding based on their portfolio and remit and would then decide how to split that money up. Now I assume (and with RCUK's help) they will have to make seperate cases for funding for the national facilities and for astro/pp/np. Thus it is even more essential (as if it wasn't anyway) that STFC makes a strong and compelling case for support for their science areas. However, this is a job that the STFC CEO has claimed (at the town-hall at the Belfast NAM for one) is not his - its the job of the community, hence it was not his fault there was a poor settlement it was all of ours. As long-time readers of this blog will know this is a line he likes to use. Unlike some astronomy colleagues I disagree with this sentiment - it is still STFC's role to go to bat for our research area since we are in their remit.

That said, the STFC CEO is partly right, the community does have a role to play. We need to make our case to government that astronomy, space science, particle physics and nuclear physics are all worth funding and are worth funding well. This must be done before the next CSR to make sure that the pot of money that goes straight to the grants is decent. This is a one shot job since we cannot rely on clever book balancing to make the difference in the future (and for the sake of the science relying on Diamond and ISIS, etc, we should not be expecting it). Of course the financial situation is unlikely to have vastly improved in that time but it is worth remembering that in the great scheme of things science is cheap, an extra £100m worth of additional funding buys a whole lot of world-leading research.

So the take-home message from the Drayson-Stirling fix is that there will be some stability (which is good) and the grants will be protected as much as they can be, but it is absolutely essential that the community pulls out all the stops to make the case for an increased budget. Sadly whilst the current STFC management is in place we cannot rely on them to make the case for us, they have essentially already said that its not their job.

The Drayson-Stirling fix of STFC was an important and very welcome first step and we scientists can now work within the proposals that have been put forward to try to ensure that things do not get much worse.

*HMSA = Her Majesty's Space Agency
** I say perceived as no one has public domain evidence that the plan at the CSR was to deliberately cut back astronomy et al.

STFC fix

2010-03-14T23:20:00.004Z

This post is a little delayed due to having other things to do, but I thought I might add my thoughts to the recent(ish) announcement of the STFC fix.

On Thursday 4th March Lord Drayson proposed a series of measures with the aim of 'fixing' STFC. This was achieved by working with Michael Stirling the relatively new chair of STFC.

Lord Drayson said:

“There is no doubt STFC faced a difficult situation. A lot of work has gone in to finding ways of preventing such pressures rearing their heads again in future. The better management of international subscriptions through measures to manage exchange rates, and longer-term planning and budgeting for large domestic facilities will allow STFC’s grant-giving functions to be managed with a higher degree of predictability. The community has come out strongly in support of grants remaining with STFC to deliver investment continuity from facility design through to exploitation, and I accept this argument. These measures will allow the Council to pursue the programme it set out in December within its budget.”

The principle plans are as follows:

Grants for astronomy, particle physics and nuclear physics will remain with STFC
BIS will provide STFC with protection against fluctuations in exchange rates that hit international subscription costs for the remainder of the spending review. For 2011/12 onwards options are being explored for managing the risk (nothing concrete yet)
From 2011/12 RCUK and STFC will determine the requirements for the large national facilities that STFC operates mostly for researchers supported by other research councils, at the start of each CSR period. Funding to cover the operating costs will be assigned independently from BIS and will be managed independently from the remainder of the budget allocation. Thus grants will no longer be directly tensioned against these facilities - the so-called Chinese wall.
One of the big international subscriptions will be removed from STFC; it is likely that the ESA subscription will move to the new UK Space Agency.

Now first of all credit where credit is due.

Lord Drayson heard all the moaning about the problems at STFC, saw the result of the re-prioritisation and recognised that there was a real problem (the moaning was justified). In the economic times we find ourselves the Minister could hardly throw money at the problem (even though it would cost only about £50m to fix the loss of science) and so he took steps to try and make sure that the giant squeeze on the grants line would not be repeated in the future. To do this he has tackled some of the big issues that he had any influence over: mainly how things within STFC's purview are tensioned together.

On the face of it the proposals are pretty good and are an excellent step on the way to fixing a research council that quite frankly has been broken since day one. Removing the tension between the large national facilities and the research grants is a good thing - neither the PPAN nor the PALS community could have been happy with the existing situation.

Moving the ESA subscription to the new space agency (with an announcement on that coming soon I believe) makes perfect sense given the breadth of UK involvement with ESA. I have heard it said that the STFC essentially subsidises UK business by paying the ESA subscription given the twin factors of science and commercial contracts. Whether that is true or not it is a non-issue if the subs are handled by a space agency that should work to benefit both science and industry.

Thanks to BIS, and DIUS before it, STFC has not been too badly hit by the currency fluctuations. However, it was a disaster waiting to happened and by establishing a more permanent means of protection for STFC this could stave off any major problems in the future.

A couple of things must be noted: These are proposals and as such are not yet set in stone; I presume that there is no guarantee that the next government (even if it is a Labour one) will see them through. Indeed there are some potential flaws with the current proposals that must be handled carefully, but that is just the nature of things. More on the flaws tomorrow.

For now, well done to Lord Drayson and Michael Stirling for their first attempt at fixing STFC.

Apocalypse Soon*

2010-01-19T17:13:00.004Z

Following my last post I thought it worth drawing attention to what is perhaps the most important set of slides presented at the Astronomy Forum.

Prof. Mike Cruise is the chair of the Astronomy Grants Panel; his panel has the job of sifting through the many applications for standard and rolling grants and deciding who gets funding. Since the funding crisis began it has been a thankless task - they have had to wield the axe for the decisions made higher up.

The slides that Mike presented tell a hideous story of decline since STFC became the steward and custodian of astronomy and space science. The poor settlement in CSR07 had led to a 25% cut in grants awarded in the past two years (not to mention facilities targeted for slicing in the programmatic review), sadly this was not enough to cover the shortfall (£80m in 2007) leading to a need for deeper cuts now.

I don't need to cover old ground about the projects and facilities that are going to be axed but it is very much worth examining the fall-out at the coal-face.

According to AGP they were expecting to fund a total of 90 posts this round (there is only one round per year at STFC). In total they received requests for 151 posts from 84 standard grants and 20 rolling grants and expected to fund 14 posts for the standards and 76 for the rollers.
[CORRECTION: It has been pointed out in comments that Mike's slides probably mean that there were 151 posts requested for the rolling grants alone PLUS an assumed 84 posts on the standard grants]

Remember this already includes the 25% cut that had occurred in the previous two years. Also remember that the advisory panels all said that protecting grants and fellowships was the highest priority and this recommendation was disregarded.

On January 12th AGP learnt that the actual target number of posts was possibly reduced to 75 and could be as low as 56 in future rounds. This has a major bearing on the amount they can fund:
75 posts = 12 standard and 14 rolling grants
56 posts = 10 standard and 7 rolling grants (from 84 and 20 applications respectively)

This is a disastrous state of affairs.

Mike very wisely pointed out that the facilities that we now have owe their existence to the kinds of groups whose support would disappear at the proposed levels. This includes, of course the technical capability to build and any potential technological improvements that might spin from them.

A comparison of the past and future is quite chilling (slide 6). We will lose coherency, international leadership, technical experience and knowledge exchange, stability (required to get support from Universities).

We will have a community of independent academics who may get one or two grants in their whole career. With no stability how can we see any long-term projects through to fruition?

What the STFC chair and CEO thought about this I don't know. Rumour has it that Prof. Mason thought it was acceptable since 56 PDRA's per year represents a programme. To find out we will have to wait until the minutes of the forum become available.

Of course this has an important impact on any move now to 'fix' STFC. Lord Drayson has stepped up to the plate and is reviewing the structural problems that afflict STFC. Whatever fix he comes up with will occur quickly (end of February) but its important to make sure that we do not just end up with a new mess in a new form.

From Mike's slides at the Astronomy Forum it becomes quite clear that a major danger is that astronomy and space science will be severely underfunded if the current cuts stand. If we move to EPSRC with the current funding then astronomy is stuffed; if we stay in STFC with the current funding with some sort of ring-fence we are stuffed (as that ring won't ever grow!).

The problem is I have no idea how to fix this; although Lord Drayson wants to fix the overall structural problem he cannot tell STFC to re-allocate the money they have as it will violate the Haldane principle. Well actually I suppose he can if he believes (and can show) that STFC has ignored community input, and the evidence is in the paper trail. He cannot provide additional money as I bet there isn't any, even though its a drop in the ocean compared to the overall government spend.

Frankly the decision lies in the hands of the STFC council (maybe the executive) and it is far from clear that they want to re balance the cuts or even register that this is a problem.

Particularly maddening is that last week RCUK released a report that showed that UK academic staff had risen by 14% between 2003/4 and 2007/8. Paul Crowther calculated that UK astronomy academics had increased by 12.6% (based on the PPARC/STFC studentship quota exercises) for the same period - not the 40% increase from 2005-2007 that Prof. Mason has quoted. Thus these cuts are massively disproportionate.

If a solution to this cannot be found, UK astronomy will indeed be facing an apocalypse. The sad thing is that I cannot see where a solution would come from.

____________________________________________________

It is important to note that this is just astronomy, it is not clear what the effects on grants will be for particle physics and nuclear physics but I strongly suspect it will be just as devastating.

* with thanks to Paul Crowther, who's Tweet inspired the title

Prioritisation - A doomed strategy

2010-01-19T15:40:00.007Z

The astronomy forum was held on Friday with special guests from STFC. Being a minor player I was not there but word is spreading from folks who were about what went on. A rundown of the format can be viewed at Paul Crowther's website.

It was a game of two halfs: the first concentrated on the prioritisation exercise; the second emphasised the review of STFC structural issues that Lord Drayson has initiated. More on the latter soon, for now I want to concentrate on the former.

Several short presentations were given including a report of concerns from the NUAP community, the FUAP community and a big question about STFC's attitude to an area of their science.

The first and third of those I mention were linked. NUAP pointed out that a lot of effort went into the (science-driven) community consultation and the resultant strategy (which was quite excellent in my view) and prioritisation of what was needed to achieve this. Slide 3 is the kicker as it reveals the major discrepancies between the community-agreed recommendations and what PPAN actually recommended:

1) grants and fellowships muct be protected as teh highest priority
STFC has cut them

2) current in-situ space plasma facilities were of high priority for 3 of 7 highest priority questions
STFC is withdrawing support for them

3) High priority for access to a Northern hemisphere telescope to answer 2 high priority questions
STFC is closing them

4) AURORA/ExoMars judged to be of lower-middle priority for 1 high priority question
STFC is funding it

What STFC management replied to this I don't know exactly yet, but I hear that the words 'scientific excellence' were bandied around. That has become the phrase of choice for our dear CEO to hide behind; he seems to have finally cast off the 'it's your fault' mantra in favour of another pointless but pithy response.

The NUAP presentation ended by asking why these discrepancies occurred. Quite reasonably they want to know how PPAN used the NUAP document that took so many man-hours of effort to produce. They also want to know what PPAN's equivalent strategy is - I take that to mean they want to know how PPAN tensioned everything together (all inputs from advisory panels).

The other presentation was entitled: Is it STFC strategy to cease in situ space plasma science? I must point out this is of much interest to me; space plasma physics and solar terrestrual physics are massively intertwined - understanding the space plasma phenomena is essential to understanding how the Sun effects the Earth. That is why it has always been stupid to seperate ground and space based STP. Plus as you can see the space based side of things is now being cut massively (though STEREO thankfully persists).

The only insitu space plasma mission to survive is Rosetta and that is starting a 4 year hibernation. The pioneering Venus Express, Cluster and Cassini missions are all subject to a managed withdrawal.

Please bear in mind that these were important for answering 3 of the 7 highest priority questions
oulined by NUAP (point 2 above). In fact they were inportant for answering another of the questions that NUAP conceived in its strategy.

The consequences of this loss are painful beyond the loss of associated jobs and by removing these facilities no we are left with no capability in the next few years - an area of science will effectively start to dry up.

Technical competence will be lost and there will be no national capability (which is currently spread across several universities and labs) in space based measurement techniques.
The UK community will be severely damaged as a partner (the named missions had just been extended by ESA, something the UK had presumably agreed to late last year) and credibility for future initiatives (such as Solar orbiter, Cross Scale and EJSM which might be selected for launch from Cosmic Visions). Yet again the UK's ability to monitor, and more importantly to understand, space hazards is restricted.

So in answer to the question: Is it STFC strategy to cease in situ space plasma science? Keith Mason replied: 'No'.

Well, actions tend to speak louder than words. Plus it seems that earlier in the day the CEO had allegedly commented that in a declining budget we should be focusing on fewer subject areas - which to me sounds lik 'Yes!' This is a sentiment that he has expressed before; he has stated that we do too much exploitation and we need to scale it back. But then again this is the man who cannot tell the difference between 4% and 40% so take from that what you will.

So that brings me to my final point and the point of this rambling rant: Strategy.

STFC does not have a strategy.

All of these cuts are being undertaken with no strategy in mind.

The advisory panels provided strategies for their areas but it is far from clear that it was in PPAN's remit to consider their final prioritisation within the context of a science strategy. Hopefully the PPAN document that is due later this month will clarify this, but it seems as if PPAN were told to just tension everything together.

STFC CEO bandies around the phrase 'scientifc excellence' as some sort of protective device; a magic prophylactic that keeps him safe from the disease of criticism. Plus he thinks we should focus on fewer areas in a time of declining finances. On the face of it these seem reasonable until you actually stop and engage your brain for a second.

Scientific excellence is the only criteria required to determine which facilities we should keep and which we should close - well first of all who's subjective view of excellence are we talking about? Most of the NUAP community thought insitu space physics was excellent, yet PPAN and above clearly thought it was less excellent than other things. Not to mention the status of Aurora.

Okay but in ten years time, what if space plasma physics might be excellent compared to the other stuff that we are funding? Well its too late then because we no longer have a capability in that field - we will have closed the door because of a myopic vision of how STFC should respond to squeezed finances. I could be talking about any field here, Nuclear for example. This is what a strategy should help to prevent.

Pinning your science funding on just a few selected areas might work if your goal is to direct exactly what it is that people should be working on but is a route to catastrophic failure in terms of the evolution of scientific inquiry. It is an effective dead-end which will leave us behind the rest of the world (lets not get into the increased spending in the US and other places).

Scientific excellence is essential - we should not fund bum science just to keep things trundling along. But on the same score, one should not close down an excellent, productive, internationally recognised area of science because you feel that the programme needs more focus. Other research councils have both remit and strategy - its a sensible thing to do and it is appalling that STFC has made such far reaching and damaging decisions without the benefit of a strategy to guide them, especially after the advisory panels went to so much effort to create stratgies that could be merged.

Lack of a clear science strategy is dooming STFC science and sadly it is clear that although Lord Drayson wishes to fix some of the associated issues thsi will have no effect on the cuts that have already been announced.

They stand no matter how flawed the process was that got us there.

Post-mortem III Nuclear

2009-12-20T00:41:00.004Z

A quick one.

I feel very sorry for the nuclear community. They came into STFC and have taken a hell of a beating for their trouble. What's worse is the comments from STFC that we don't need these types of nuclear scientists; how daft is it to talk down an area of science within your own remit? That's going to make life easy when bidding for cash at the next CSR isn't it?

There is a sense of deja-vu here.

If you compare what has happened to nuclear with what was done to STP you see a pattern emerging. It is as if STFC does not know how to deal with small communities - everything gets tensioned against everything else and the small players get hit the hardest. There is no regard for national capability (at least from the outside looking in).

Is this a direct result of the dire lack of strategy at STFC? When some young STP scientists visited Keith Mason after the PPARC programmatic review they came away with the answer that PPARC had no public strategy (but got the impression that a strategy existed in the CEO's mind); this has carried over into STFC which is a general hodge-podge of different sciences and facilities.

Is this lack of strategy one of the major failings of STFC? A colleague termed the way STFC handles small communities a 'failure of process'.

Any approach to try and fix STFC has to take this lack of clear strategy seriously. We all want to do good science but there must be some mechanism in place which stops larger disciplines inadvertently killing smaller ones, particularly when those small areas may be of important strategic value to the UK.

This is not code for 'impact', I'd argue that astronomy has important value to the UK, as does particle physics.

It's not special pleading for a particular area, its asking for due consideration of the fall-out of tensioning whopping great science areas against much smaller ones and then letting the dice fall wherever.

Post-Mortem II - consultation

2009-12-18T11:43:00.004Z

'A Farce',
'A con',
'Massive waste of time and effort'

Just 3 terms I have heard (or seen) used to describe the latest STFC reprioritisation exercise.

The rumour mill is already grinding and it is not clear at all yet what is true, what is false and what is false but with a grain of truth.

One rumour that is fast spreading is that PPAN ignored most (if not all) of the advice from the advisory panels and just went their own way. They didn't even bother to re-look at the prioritisation from the last programmatic review - a process that still leaves a bitter taste in many mouths, not least as the community had little input and very little faith in the process.

What was the point of this consultation if it did not address the underlying flaws in the previous debacle???

Well, first of all it is far from clear that PPAN ignored the advice of the panels and that they did not re-assess past rankings. In fact there is some demonstrable evidence that some rankings from the past have changed (e.g. Venus Express is just one example, check out the list for yourself and compare with the old version).

The rumour might have been started from PPAN themselves, who released a statement on the STFC website that said:

At its meeting on 28th and 29th September 2009, PPAN developed a preliminary prioritised list of projects for those not considered in the 2007 / 08 Programmatic Review.

At first reading this looks like an admission that PPAN did not reconsider or revisit the programmatic review in light of the wide and, supposedly, thorough community consultation. However Jon Butterworth (member of PPAN) told me via Twitter that PPAN did relook at the old list and pointed to several changes (inc Venus Express) that were made.

Furthermore, PPAN will soon be releasing a report detailing how they reached their recommendations and how the advisory panel advice was incorporated.

I await this with interest and I'm keeping my powder dry concerning the consultation until I see that document. I'd like to be re-assured that it was the science questions formulated by the panels that drove their recommendations rather than the facilities themselves (a perceived flaw in both the PPARC and STFC programmatic reviews: facilities leading the science) and how they reconcile the rankings they came up with to the rankings in the panels advice.

I am also keen to hear from the chairs of the advisory panels to get their perspective of the discussions with PPAN and what they thought of the process. Beyond that the Science Board perspective would also be very welcome.

It is very early days to give a ringing endorsement of how STFC has done consultation, anyone who does is jumping the gun a wee bit. At the same time it is a little early to make claims that the process was flawed, even though my own untrusting nature makes me fear that it was (a problem that will persist until the current management is removed and the CEO's 'vision' is kicked into touch)

If it turns out it was flawed, well I think the shit will well and truly hit the fan then and I'll be doing my fair share of flinging.

Post-Mortem I - exploitation

2009-12-18T10:45:00.006Z

So I see that Paul Crowther has written a guest post over at the e-Astronomer querying what the future might be for STFC after Lord Drayson's intriguing comments. I partly agree with Mr. Physicist:

The biggest problem with STFC is its management and that could and should change. Sure the merger of STFC/CCLRC, CRS07, etc all played their part, but it is clear almost 2 years later where many people put the blame for a crisis that turned into a disaster.

So, dont change the structure – change the management.

I say partly because I think there have to be some structural changes to address the imbalance between facilities and exploitation.

Which brings me to my theme:

Exploitation

Addressing rumours of a disturbing trend before it becomes reality.

When did we start calling research 'exploitation'. Agreed much of our research does indeed exploit the facilities operated by STFC but surely that should not be exclusively so.

I am employed on a research grant, to do research. In the course of that research I exploit data from several instruments but the exploitation is not the be-all and end-all.

There is a distrurbing creep (dash?) towards the idea that all research funded by STFC should exploit the STFC facilities. There is an argument to be made here that since we have invested so much we should do just that. Surely though we are in the business of doing the best science and if that involves using equipment outside of STFC then so be it.

If the STFC kit is so wonderful then chances are that lots of people will want to use it and so we get return on our investment. People should not be forced to pen their ideas into 'what can we do with X, Y or Z' and unfortunately I am getting the feeling that is exactly what STFC expects us to do. Of course there are fine details like the relative sizes of communities who use instruments but the principle remains.

So we are facing a managed withdrawal from certains projects. The sense I am getting is that STFC now expects to cut any grants that rely on these facilities since they don't do that bit of science anymore. I could be wrong, but if not then I call bullshit.

Let's take an example; Cluster and Cassini will now be subject to a managed withdrawal - does this mean that grants that rely on the use of Cluster and Cassini data should be rejected without consideration of their scientific merit? I suspect (again I could be wrong) that STFC would say: yes (AGP might think differently but then there would be an interesting stand-off).

But Cluster and Cassini have a wealth of historical data to be plundered, lots of great science could come out of that. Should we just ignore that because we no longer offer post-launch support? Should someone else's decisions about what the UK builds effectively dictate what science we should be allowed to do?

Well maybe that is a bad example because data from both these missions are archived by ESA and since we pay the subscription they remain an STFC funded resource. In theory even if STFC say that we should not do science with unfunded instruments then Cluster and Cassini data are still funded.

But what if I wanted to use data from the new RBSP mission to examine fundamental space plasma science, would STFC even consider that in this brave new age? It has no links to STFC funded instrumentation. Or even the new SWARM mission - ESA mission with no STFC connection, its on the NERC side of things. Not sure STFC even knows it exists yet it could easily (and will) address science that lies square within STFC's remit. Would STFC allow grants to 'exploit' this?

It needs to be made clear what policies STFC has in place as we move beyond the reprioritisation. I don't think anyone can justify removing a whole area of scientific enquiry from their effective remit simply be closing an instrument down. We need to be sure that STFC are not thinking that that is what they are doing.

And the scores from the judges...

2009-12-17T10:20:00.001Z

Well, by now I'm sure you have all seen and heard the news. The full announcement can be seen here.

The webcast of the press conference was cringeworthy - I thought poor John Womersley was going to have a stroke at one point. Some fantastic little comments in there:

"[we're facing a] short term blip" - Keith Mason

"There may be grants rounds which may be skipped as a result of this [reprioritisation]" - John Womersley

"There has been no reduction in support" - Keith Mason

Pick-up by the media was slow but has grown with reports from the Guardian, BBC, Times Higher. The Times has focused on the Nuclear side of things, a new angle for a story that many thought covered last year. Of course many senior science reporters will be tied up with the Copenhagen meeting.

It is interesting to note that the BBC article blames the current financial crisis:

The council has been forced to make savings following the global financial crisis and the fall in the value of the pound, which has increased the cost of its subscriptions to large international facilities including the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Switzerland.

Of course this is not really true, we are witnessing the continued mess following the merger of PPARC and CCLRC exacerbated by the financial crisis. It should also be borne in mind that these cuts do not in any way cover the cost of the £600m savings that universities and science need to make for the Treasury.

So anyway these are the headline points:

we owe the other research councils thanks for subbing us 14m to allow STFC to honour its grants commitment.
a 10% cut on research grants, that I assume falls AFTER those proposals that depend on withdrawn facilities are culled.
25% reduction on fellowships and PhD places
the managed withdrawal from a number of facilities across particle, astronomy and nuclear physics

It was vaguely amusing to see that MoonLITE had a brand new category made especially for it by PPAN - sub alpha. I wonder if it will still manage to push ahead in the future.

The response from the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee:

We are hugely disappointed that studentships and fellowships will be cut. We hope that this is only a short term measure and that they will return to pre-2009 capacity as soon as possible.

It is clearly unacceptable that any Research Council has to bear the brunt of increased cost as a result of the vagaries of currency fluctuations. The Government needs to establish a centrally-driven, robust system for funding international subscriptions based on scientific peer review.

At the earliest opportunity we will examine these cuts in detail.

A comment from Lord Drayson was intriguing:

However, it has become clear to me that there are real tensions in having international science projects, large scientific facilities and UK grant giving roles within a single Research Council. It leads to grants being squeezed by increases in costs of the large international projects which are not solely within their control. I will work urgently with Professor Sterling, the STFC and the wider research community to find a better solution by the end of February 2010.

For what its worth, your first step should be to sack Mason. I still reckon this can all be traced back to him not asking for enough money in the CSR07. Get rid oof him and put someone with some managements skill and competence in place.

What does this all mean for STP?

Interpreted in its broadest sense the post-launch support for several related missions are toast:
Cluster, Cassini and SOHO

The first and last do not surprise me but I was shocked at the loss of Cassini support. A key point is that this is operations money - not science. I would hope that if someone came up with an excellent science case for exploiting the wealth of historical data available from these ex-facilities STFC would not be prejudiced.

On the other hand some things survived albeit with taking a cut to operating costs:
Hinode, STEREO, Cosmic Visions, Solar Orbiter (not sure why this is separate from Cosmic Visions.

LOFAR-UK which had STP possibilities is also gone.

So where do we stand? Well probably about where we thought we would.

Unlike when this first blew up in 2007/2008 (and in fact in the previous PPARC programmatic review) STP is far from being singled out. The pain is being spread wide and it is tempting to say 'I told you so' to those folks who were reluctant to make a fuss back in the day. But that is far from useful now - we are all in this together now and we have to come up with a way to try and fix this mess and at the very least stop further cuts from eroding our science base in the future.

PostScript

It's the next day and feelings are still running high On the Today programme John Womersley was called a liar by a nuclear physicist; on Andy's blog there is a rather heated argument about whether ESA is to blame for all of this. Frankly, that discussion is not doing anyone any favours, particularly the tone. And this comes from me - hardly the most polite person in this whole debacle.

It is important to discovere what went wrong and what led us to this point. It's no good saying we should just move forward and get on with things, because if you don't learn the lessons of history you are bound to yada, yada, yada. That said we can do it better than by sliding into our natural camps and shouting at each other.

One of the great things to come out of this two-year long mess is the cohesion across astronomy and particle physics. We haven't always agreed on the best way to do things; we haven't always sang from the same song sheet; but we have avoided attacking each other and playing 'my science is better than yours', at least not in public.

Sadly I fear that we are on the brink of that disaster.

A post-mortem is needed, we need to assess how much of the communities views PPAN and science board actually captured. We need to find out what reasons (possibly good ones) exist for deviations from those views. Moreover we need to assess whether the decisions made are good ones. For example is it reasonable to cut support on missions near their end of life (seems so) whilst maintaining support for missions that may never even get launched (possible big gap in years to come)? Has the right balance been achieved?

If we can do that without screaming at each other and sticking the knife in we may get somewhere and we might look sympathetic to the public rather than whinghing ivory-tower academics.

Just a thought.

Oh, yes, except for Mason, say whatever the hell you like about him.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Kav.

The end is nigh

2009-12-16T13:43:00.002Z

So today we hear the result of the STFC prioritisation.

Some rumours have started to leak out since STFC has been calling around some PIs to tell them how stuffed they might be. Confirmed is the final demise of Clover - Cardiff's bid to get it revived was summarily dismissed. Rumour has it that both LHCb and ALICE are for the chop but that is unconfirmed as of yet.

Its likely to be bleak. Peter Coles is keeping a running blog post about it and I suspect that #stfc will be a trending topic today on Twitter.

Brian Cox was on the BBC Daily Politics programme today and did a sterling job here and here.

The problem is that there is no money. Even if Lord Drayson appreciated the problem there is little he can do about it right now - the Treasury is unlikely to fling even £10m our way. This cock-up preceded the economic crisis and any hopes of fixing it have been dashed by our banking friends who have sucked up any spare money that might have been lying around.

Impact

2009-12-16T00:21:00.004Z

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to see two talks on impact from two funding agencies: EPSRC (for RCUK) and HEFCE.

Sadly the first did little to inspire me with confidence, despite the efforts of the speaker.

A key thrust of the presentation was that RCUK does not want us to predict the future (no fortune telling) rather they just want us to spend some time thinking about what the potential impacts might be and how we would go about developing them. So far, so good.

Unfortunately I got the impression (as did some others I spoke to) that they did want us to try to predict the future. In fact the overall impression I took from the talk was that RCUK still doesn't really know what it wants in terms of 'impact'. This was a view shared by several at the meeting. Perhaps this is unfair but I should point out that I am not as hostile to the whole impact idea as others and so this view is not based on a prejudiced view of impact statements. Also the EPSRC rep did state that they would not hold us to the statements we produce - they expect things to evolve and change just as scientific enquiry does - a fair point but then I have to wonder about the worth of the impact statements.

The talk from HEFCE was more encouraging and was dominated by a single theme: "we don't really know how its going to work, we are going to try this in the pilot scheme and see how it goes." I found this incredibly refreshing and encouraging and I left the talk feeling optimistic that they might just get it right. Of course they have a loooong way to go and they really need to get more feedback but at least they are thinking that. I still worry that too much emphasis is going to be placed on the nebulous idea of impact and a lot will depend on their final weightings for the importance of impact in teh overall assessment.

My personal view is that considering impact is not a bad idea. I have recently filled in an impact plan for a grant application. It certainly allowed me to consider ways in which I could spread the word about the science I would do and beg for money to help do that - this is especially useful if you think of the outreach side of impact.

But I am still uneasy about the whole impact agenda, it still feels wrong, like some slowly creeping doom; the thin end of the wedge, perhaps.

I wonder whether they have got things arse about face. Surely the best time to consider potential impact is AFTER the work has been done. If a clear possibility for spin-out, or whatever, can then be identified perhaps there should be a seperate pot of money to support that development.

Here is an embryo of an idea:

If a piece of work has an excellent impact plan but fails to get funding because it was up against better blues skies research that proposal should be made available to other potential funders UK or European industry, relevant government departments, etc. If they think it is worth doing for the possible economic impact then they can fund the research to the levels requested plus develop a strategy for translating the product to the marketplace or whatever. This way we maximise obvious and immediate impact without impacting blue skies research that could yield something in the long term.

Considering the impact that your work might have is not such a bad thing but let us be very clear that this will not and never can influence whether we fund a project from a science budget that is dedicated to blue skies research. To do otherwise is madness and societal suicide.

STP: NERC vs. STFC

2009-12-15T23:11:00.003Z

A couple of weeks ago it was announced that some of solar-terrestrial physics was going to be 'moved' to NERC from its current home at STFC. This followed a recommendation of the Wakeham review of physics:

The Panel recommends that responsibility be transferred to the Natural Environment Research Council for those parts of solar terrestrial physics research which are most relevant to the NERC mission.That transfer should be accompanied by sufficient funds to enable NERC to administer and support the current level of research.

To be clear, this is not a wholesale move of STP to NERC from STFC, much of the work of interest to the community is still supposed to be funded by STFC, though that will depend on what is announced tomorrow.

In the announcement Alan Thorpe, CEO of NERC (and head of RCUK) said:

"I welcome the transfer of responsibility for Earth-oriented solar terrestrial physics, which will strengthen the delivery of NERC's strategy. This area of physics includes, for example, studies of space weather impacts on technological systems, ionospheric effects on communications and global positioning, and solar influences on global climate change. We look forward to working with the new members of our community."

Which is nice. This transfer also includes funding for ground-based STP instrumentation, which at the moment has been solely identified as EISCAT*. I still have some issues with splitting funding based on where a measurement is taken rather than what you plan on doing with it but so be it.

At the recent Autumn MIST meeting some representatives from NERC came to talk to us about how the transfer will work and what we might expect to find in NERC. To me this was a very encouraging step, and I came away from the meeting feeling somewhat more positive; not least because the NERC guys had seen some solid, exciting science in one of the best Autumn MIST meetings I have been to.

Our favourite CEO also offered an opinion:

Professor Keith Mason, STFC's Chief Executive, said, "This reorganisation of the funding for solar terrestrial physics recognises the contribution this community can make to the work of the NERC. STFC will continue to work with the community to ensure a smooth transition period and to support space-based facilities and non-Earth orientated solar terrestrial physics, focused upon our understanding of the physics of the Sun as our nearest star and its central role in our Solar System."

There is a bit more to it than that. One aspect of STP is fundamental space plasma physics - not just understanding the Sun but also understanding diverse topics such as turbulence in the solar wind, magnetic reconnection across all scales, kelvin-helmholtz instabilities at magnetic boundaries such as the magnetopause, etc. STFC is still responsible for these topics and for any magnetospheric science that is based in space rather than on the ground.

Ironically, in this time of impact, STFC have managed to shed an important area of science with the potential for huge economic and societal impact, but Keith has never rated the application of science spin-outs; rather he prefers the technological angle. Indeed at a meeting at RAL, when reminded about the dangers of giant solar storms (such as the Carrington event 150 years ago) he agreed that if we had experienced such a thing in the past few years then STP would have no problems - but we don't live in that world. A man with clear forward vision there.

There will undoubtedly be some tricky times ahead (not least depending on tomorrow's announcement) as NERC and STFC balance who pays for proposals that straddle the two (what if you want to study processes within the radiation belts that includes the loss to the atmosphere?). The NERC chaps told us that RCUK has now set up better protocols to deal with this sort of cross-council issue; this is a good thing as past experience was less than encouraging. Perhaps I am being naive (makes a change from jaded and cynical) but the NERC chaps were convincing and came across well.

So now STP is spread across NERC and STFC. The future is far from clear - is it ever?

*Other instruments besides EISCAT are still operating (on a shoestring) but are due to go under very soon. The reason that NERC has not considered these is probably because STFC has always maintained that they were cut and so no longer funded. In actuality the STP National Facilities program was axed in the PPARC programmatic review. Keith Mason would have you think that was the end of it but actually groups that operated these instruments were encouraged to seek instrument support through the grants line (operating costs were so small that this was highly feasible) with appropriate science cases. This was done and a couple of groups were successful. Thus STFC was still supporting ground-based STP when Keith claimed they were not. He clearly had not kept up with the developments (of course EISCAT had never been cut before the notorious 2007 Strategy Delivery Plan).

Investing in the future...

2009-12-15T20:37:00.004Z

STFC: investing in the future 2010-15

That's the start of the spin that STFC is going to give tomorrow's press conference announcing the results of the prioritisation. Of course STFC has form with spinning bad news and to be fair they are hardly going to say how awful it might be. I say might because we don't know what is going to be announced.

By now the council has met and okayed some plan for STFC to pursue some science and balance the budget it has. We mere mortals have no idea what is going to be announced - maybe it will be good news, maybe it will be bad. Chances are that unless the government has managed to dig extra cash out from behind the sofa cushions the news will be bad. Very bad.

Those who read this blog regularly will know the back history. For those that don't, have a look here, here and for a nice summary here.

The cuts in research support that STFC have already implemented (25% reduction in each grants round) have gone no way to plugging the hole in the budget first highlighted two years ago. It's funny to think how angry I was that December, sat in Norway on an experimental campaign, when I saw the ill-advised STFC strategy delivery plan. It's not funny that this whole farago is still going on and getting worse.

For a discussion of what might might be you can look at Andy Lawrence's blog (new chair of AGP - more fool him), Peter Cole's blog or follow the discussion on Twitter.

To get a real feeling for how the community feels about this, then I suggest reading this blog post. It says what I want to say but says it better.

I hope that when the announcement comes tomorrow the particle physicists, astronomers, nuclear physicists and space scientists all stand together and don't start to squabble, that would only make Keith smile.

STFC grants announcement

2009-09-29T17:06:00.002+01:00

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?

2009-07-29T12:27:00.005+01:00

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

2009-07-28T15:44:00.002+01:00

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

2009-07-28T13:39:00.007+01:00

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

2009-07-24T16:17:00.002+01:00

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

2009-07-22T13:18:00.003+01:00

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

2009-05-26T13:58:00.004+01:00

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...

2009-05-26T13:43:00.003+01:00

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

2009-05-13T15:08:00.003+01:00

... 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!

2009-05-13T15:04:00.002+01:00

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.

Too busy

2009-05-12T16:55:00.003+01:00

... to blog.

There is lots I want to talk about from the exciting new Formula 1 season, through the joys of new fatherhood to the great debate over science research and economic impact.

Unfortunately (and somewhat ironically given the name of this blog) the real world keeps intervening.

Recently I go home each evening and get to spend a couple of hours playing with my daughter before her bedtime. Then I might watch some TV or, more often than not, crack open the laptop and get on with some more work. Not much time for sharing my all important opinion on things with the rest of the interwebs.

Not complaining, you understand, just explaining. Busy, busy, busy.

Who ate my snark???

2009-03-23T23:26:00.003Z

I finally write two blog posts tonight following days of inactivity and they both disappear! Both were inspired by this article in New Scientist.

The first was a beautiful piece of snark aimed at the idiocy of the decisions of our favourite CEO of a research council (remember peer-review advises it doesn't decide) whilst the other was a discussion of the issues raised in the article.

The first appears and sits on top of the blog right up until I hit post for the second. Then everything goes screwy and both are gone next time I load up the page!

Hey-ho.

Boost for science

2009-03-17T10:13:00.003Z

I take it all back they clearly know what they are doing!

It is great to see that DIUS is attempting to follow the path that Obama has laid down. They are certainly tackling my fear that current plans are a zero-sum game; a £1bn boost to science spending would alleviate this worry significantly.

It's up to the treasury now. It will be interesting to see whether they think that science is as good an investment as toxic debt generated by irresponsible bankers.

The great debate

2009-03-16T23:15:00.002Z

I said in my earlier post that I support the debate over the future of research in the UK and I thought I would clarify. I think scientific research has a role to play in driving the economy, a big role, in fact. I also said that I was worried about the government's plans, mostly that they don't really have any, and what they do have is ill thought through.

I know, I know, they are only consulting at this time, but the rhetoric from Denham and others is such as to make one wonder.

Today, scientists are being told that they have to identify the economic impact of their work. Every grant application has a section devoted to economic impact. This has been viewed with scorn in some quarters. Distinguished scientists have called for a modest-revolt against this practice, especially since the economic impact statement has no teeth (the statement is not considered in the funding process). I'm not sure what the worth of these compulsory plans is beyond adding to the red-tape and bureaucracy that scientists find themselves plunged ever deeper into. The idea of a revolt has been challenged:

But he[Denham] criticised recent suggestions from researchers that they should refuse in principle to describe the relevance of their research.
"It can't be right to expect billions of pounds of funding and then systematically deny the taxpayer any insight into its potential applications to the economy, public policy or popular understanding," he said.

I fear that the secretary of state is missing the point, and is quite frankly attempting to score points by turning those who oppose the idea of 'economic impact' into the enemy. Cheap rhetorical tricks abound in the paragraph above.

Sometimes with scientific ideas and research it is quite clear how it could lead to something of economic or societal worth. Other times it is far less clear, yet ten or twenty years down the line ideas come into their own and their worth becomes apparent.

If something has clearly identifiable benefits in the short term then by all means the mechanisms should be in place to encourage the researchers to pursue those impacts. However, to force all applicants to create an economic impact statement is not efficient and, dare I say, not particularly economical.

One also has to consider that some ideas on their own will never result in an economical benefit, does that mean that they should not be funded? What about the greater advance of human knowledge, or are we no longer concerned about the cornerstones of civilization? How about if some aspect of some obscure piece of research, when combined with a number of other equally obscure things results in a revoltionary discovery?

This drive towards economic impact is essentially asking scientists to predict the future - has anyone ever seens some of those old clips where they attempted to do this? Where is my personal jet-pack?!?

The government maintains that blue-skies research will not be damaged and will be supported since a broad-base is still required, but in the next breath they speak of 'finite budgets'. Regardless of MP Ian Taylor's (of the opposition!) protestations to the contrary this most certainly is a zero-sum game. If funding is focused on some areas it needs to be de-focused from others.

Unless the government fancies printing some more money.

What concerns me most is that the government is acting like it is grasping at straws. To a casual observer it looks as if they have grasped the fundamental point that science is a good thing and have decided to run with it, but have not really looked where they are running.

An uncharitable observer might suggest that the government is desperate for something to pull them out of the economic hole that their bliond faith in the city has dropped us into. Science fits the bill since, to their credit, they have been pumping money into the system for many years now. But they seem to want pay-back now without realising that science cannot work that way in all quarters. They have to accept that the benefits of some of the science they funded will not show through until successive (and unlikely to be Labour) governments. Investment in science pays off for everyone in the longterm and is unlikely to bring short-term political benefits to the investing party.

If the government cocks this up then they could put UK science back in a time of growing international competition. Do they really want to screw up (yet again)? If not they need to tread a lot more carefully than they have been doing and they have to be clear about what they really want from science, otherwise I wonder how big a constituency scientists make in the next general election...

Watching the Watch-dog

2009-03-16T17:15:00.003Z

Am watching the IUSS committee evidence session on "Putting science and engineering at the heart of Government policy"

The key question at the start of the session aimed to discover what the current debate really is about. Is it:

1) should we restructure UK science funding to target or focus research into key areas of benefit to the economy?

or

2) having decided to target research what areas should we choose to target?

Adrian Smith (Director General of Science and Research, DIUS) stated that it was clearly 1.

This was all well and good until it was pointed out that John Denham made a speech that said it was not a case of if but of what we should target.

Quite frankly this whole thing is puzzling and disturbing in equal measure. Although I support debate over the future of UK research and how it can help shape the future economy, I am far from convinced that the UK government really knows what it wants. The testimony of Professor Smith did nothing to re-assure me.

Weighing the evidence

2009-02-12T17:09:00.004Z

Now that the transcript for the recent IUSS evidence session with embattled STFC CEO Keith Mason is available (h/t Paul) it is the perfect opportunity for a ~~rant~~ discussion about one aspect.

From the transcript, following Question 115 (excerpted, and highlighted by me):

Professor Mason: The STFC has been quite consistent on this. It sees eMerlin as a strategic link to the SKA which is one of our highest priority items. There was a lot of concern about Jodrell Bank because of advice we received from our scientific peer review committee on eMerlin. That looked at eMerlin as an isolated project which was running late and had problems, whereas the council was looking at a strategic plan...

Q116 Graham Stringer: Let me make sure I have understood that. The funding for Jodrell Bank and some of the funding for eMerlin was going to be stopped because of the peer review, but you overrode that because you thought this was a pathway to SKA?

Professor Mason: That is in a sense correct. Peer review advises; it does not decide, but it was one of the factors that went into the equatio

Now, I can recognise the sense in what KM says, SKA is a strategic (though as of yet we have no declared science strategy... - ed.) goal and e-Merlin leads directly towards it, therefore overriding the concerns of PPAN in that case may not be unreasonable. However, it makes one start to doubt (start to doubt??? - ed.) the worth of a programmatic review carried out by people without full awareness of the strategic worth of the facilities they are considering and the importance of not looking at things in isolation.

Did PPAN look at all projects in isolation? What about the potential issue that other projects were similarly looked at in isolation rather than as part of a bigger picture?

What about EISCAT being important for EISCAT 3-D, a new generation radar with lots of positive noises in Europe? In fact it is on the ESFRI roadmap, something STFC never even bragged about even though RAL were heavily involved in the design stage. STFC declined to put out a press release even though it was a positive story of work done by their own staff, why? I can only suppose that they had their reasons.

However, EISCAT isn't really the issue; given the limitations of the programmatic review (isn't that a misnomer then -ed.) outlined by Keith, did the original programmatic review labour under the same problems - looking at things in isolation without reference to the interconnectedness of things?

It was in that review that the decision to remove the STP national facilities was taken. Keith would have you believe that it was decided to close them all down but EISCAT funding was secured (we had just signed up to the new deal - you know, the one Keith doesn't understand). the only PPARC documentation of that time points out the desire to retain a capability in ground-based STP.

Plus, and here is the kick in the nuts, those institutes that ran the national facilities were encouraged to bid for funding for them in their next rolling grant applications - one of them (at least) even got bridging funds to cover the time between NF funding disappearing and the presumed start of the next roll. In between that time the notorious strategy delivery plan was released and all went to pot, past suggestions were meaningless.

My rambling point here is: did that review consider the instruments in isolation or did it consider the fact that their effectiveness was increased together, in particular when combined with space mission data such as from Cluster? We would know if we saw the related documentation, but we haven't (even after MIST council put in a request -ed.) and quite frankly I don't think it even exists.

Hey ho.

/rant over

More evidence...

2009-02-05T18:29:00.003Z

As you may know, embattled STFC CEO Keith Mason was grilled by the IUSS select committee on the 4th. It can be viewed here.

Hopefully I will have some comments to follow (child allowing) but for the moment I offer my first impressions:

the committee is still very interested in what went on and what is going on
the committtee do not seem to have a very high opinion of STFC
Keith seemed defensive from the word go (understandably perhaps)
the committee thinks the review of STFC was a whitewash
the committee is very distrustful of STFC's ability to communicate
Keith has an annoying habit of avoiding questions by twisting them so that they sound like attacks on the integrity or intelligence of others
Keith does not realise how really bad it sounds when he says how 'relaxed' he is about things
Keith did say one good thing - he highlighted the danger of directed research at the cost of basic research, it almost sounded like a defence of his old discipline. Novel.

EISCAT on the Beeb

2009-02-05T17:58:00.005Z

This week the Sky at Night focused on the Northern Lights.

Chris Lintott travelled to the EISCAT facility in Tromsø, a place I know well, and met a couple of scientists, one of them being a professor from Lancaster University in the UK, who was up there on an experimental campaign.

The show originally aired on BBC4 on Monday and there are 4 days left to watch it on the iPlayer. It will also be shown on BBC1 on the 9th (times vary by country). Obviously I am biased but I think it is well worth a view.

In the studio Patrick was talking to Tony van Eyken (former EISCAT director) and Chris Davis (heavily involved in the very cool STEREO spacecraft). Chris showed that there was actually a CME recently, a nice thing to see in this minimum. In addition they pointed out how important this sort of science is for exploration of other planets - even Mars which only has crustal fields!

Tony pointed out that we understand the aurora in general terms but we don't understand the highly important fine detail and complexity. I suspect that is why some STP folk get accused of doing 'more of the same', folk don't realise that finer and more detailed observations throw up new and unexpected processes that operate.

The nice thing about instruments like EISCAT is that we can get a good, close-up look at these rapidly time-varying phenemona and start to understand how these processes work and that gives us a valuable insight into the things that happen on other planets, in the solar wind or even on stars.

New Year Honours

2008-12-31T02:29:00.001Z

Well the New Year Honours list is out.

Sorry Keith, I had a really good look but it seems you didn't make the cut this year.

Maybe next time.

Sir PTerry

2008-12-31T00:51:00.004Z

This put a big smile on my face.

I have been reading Pratchett's books for years now having started with Mort before reading the three earlier books and it has remained a favorite of mine. I was lucky that when I met my wife, she was as big a fan of Pratchett as I am.

I collect each new book in hard back; no chance that I would wait for the trade paperback anymore. I also read all of his books for kids/young adults and will encourage my daughter to read them as she grows up; in fact for Christmas we bought an illustrated version of the Wee Free Men for her - she'll grow into it along with the beautiful copy of Wind in the Willows we found.

When I was younger there was a distinctly sneering attitude to fantasy (and science fiction); I don't notice it now, possibly because I care less about what my peer group thinks of me. The thing about Pratchett's Discworld novels is that they are less about fantasy and more about people.

The man himself has said this:

Discworld started as an antidote to bad fantasy, because there was a big explosion of fantasy in the late '70s, an awful lot of it was highly derivative, and people weren't bringing new things to it. The first couple of books quite deliberately pastiched bits of other writers and things – good writers, because it's the good ones most people can spot: 'Ah, here's the Anne McCaffrey bit.' I was rapidly stitching together a kind of consensus fantasy universe, and the one trick was, 'Let's make people act.'

and more recently his US publisher's website has this to say about Discworld:

The world travels through space on the backs of four elephants that stand on the back of a giant turtle. Don't worry about it. People don't talk about it, any more than we say, "wow, we're standing a few thousand miles above a ball of molten iron!" Besides, it seldom has anything to do with the plots, which mostly concern real people trying to get by in a fantasy world. There are wizards, witches, trolls, dwarfs, zombies, werewolves, vampires . . . but Discworld starts where classic heroic fantasy stops, and none of those people is doing business as usual. A lot of them have moved into the big city and are trying to turn an honest dollar, just like everyone else.

That is the beauty of his books, it doesn't actually matter that they are on the Discworld, they are massively character-driven, and the characters react in a very modern fashion. Much of the magic, and strange creatures and wonderful window dressing. I think the aim of Pratchett' novels are to

hold a mirror up to society
and mock us for our silly attitudes, ideas and prejudices
and make us think about why things are as they are
and to entertain us.

I suspect that the last is the most important of his aims. Setting them in a fantasy universe provides a certain amount of latitude; the author can say things without stirring the great "moral majority" (also known as Daily Mail or Guardian readers, depending on the target). Over time there has been an evolution in the style of Pratchett's writing, the latter books have a different tone to the earlier, a little more consistently darker, perhaps even world wearier. That said I don't think that the latter books are better than the earlier, or vice-versa, they are just different and you can still tell that they are by Pratchett because there is still a warmth and affection that flows through them.

However the most recent Pratchett novel, Nation (a book for young-adults) is not set on the Discworld at all, rather it is in an alternative Earth. It's very good by the way, you should go and buy a copy.

He has an enduring fan-base, one that defies the stereotypes wished upon it by more sensible people who know that books with trolls and dwarfs in them are not for serious people. He has been called the Dickens du jour, a comparison he has shied away from in the past, claiming that he is not sure that he actually writes literature. Personally I think that he is somewhat unique, he is not like the much missed Douglas Adams, he is not similar to Tom Holt and nor does he resemble Robert Rankin; he is a one off and I am well chuffed that he has been honoured for his services to literature (which is what he does).

So what is my favourite Pratchett book?

Not an easy question, but if I were you I'd start with Good Omens, a beautiful take on the end of the world and the coming of the antichrist, co-written with Neil Gaiman (of Sandman and Neverwhere fame).

Nation is a cracking read as well. Good place to delve in.

As for the Discworld, well Mort was a good start for me and it might well be for you. I'd also go for Small Gods if you want something uplifting. If you like Shakespeare and are fed up with how wonderful Tolkien's Elves were than have a go at Lords and Ladies. Otherwise I'm at a loss: I love the Witches books, I love the Watch books, I love the Rincewind books, I love the Death books, I just love them all.

I will give you my favourite quote from Terry, given with regard to whether he kept multiple drafts of his novels:

"I save about twenty drafts -- that's ten meg of disc space -- and the last one contains all the final alterations. Once it has been printed out and received by the publishers, there's a cry here of 'Tough shit, literary researchers of the future, try getting a proper job!' and the rest are wiped."

By the way, bonus no-points towards the big no-prize if you understand the title of the post. Easy for a Pratchett fan.

Thank you scientists

2008-12-27T00:48:00.002Z

Well now it seems that skimping on sleep can lead to the hardening of arteries:

People who scrimp on sleep are more likely to develop hardening of their arteries, a precursor to heart disease, research suggests.
Calcified arteries were found in nearly a third of people who slept fewer than five hours a night.

As the proud father of a 3-week old who is already overweight and out of shape I can't tell you how happy this makes me.

Brilliant.

Well, I suppose it can just pile onto the stress caused by the STFC crisis and knock a couple of extra years off. Least it saves me worrying about a pension.

What is interesting in the article is the bit near the bottom, unhinted at in the lede:

Firstly, there may be some factor not yet identified that can both reduce sleep duration and increase calcification.
Or it might be down to blood pressure - high blood pressure increases the likelihood of calcification and blood pressure goes down during sleep.
Alternatively, stress or a stress hormone like cortisol, which has been tied to decreased sleep and increased calcification, may play a role.

So in fact it it could be nothing at all to do with whether you are not getting enough sleep, rather it could be that lack of sleep is another symptom of what is causing the calcification.

The money quote:

"Although this single study does not prove that short sleep leads to coronary artery disease, it is safe to recommend at least six hours of sleep a night."

It's funny, I wonder how many people who read the headline without following though the article would have realized that the scare quotes meant that it is just a hypothesis?

ESFRI roadmap

2008-12-16T13:49:00.002Z

Some good news for STP for a change as reported on the MIST website

EISCAT 3-D has been identified in the updated ESFRI roadmap. What is ESFRI?

ESFRI, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures, is a strategic instrument to develop the scientific integration of Europe and to strengthen its international outreach. The competitive and open access to high quality Research Infrastructures supports and benchmarks the quality of the activities of European scientists, and attracts the best researchers from around the world.

The mission of ESFRI is to support a coherent and strategy-led approach to policy-making on research infrastructures in Europe, and to facilitate multilateral initiatives leading to the better use and development of research infrastructures, at EU and international level.

Obviously this is very good news.

No word on this development from STFC yet, missing out on a nice bit of PR there considering the UK is a member of the EISCAT association - more STFC science shown to be worthy yet they don't seem to be trumpeting it like they do other areas. Is that because it could be seen to be at odds with their own assesment of EISCAT?

MIST notes that EISCAT 3-D has been placed in the

Environmental Sciences section of the Roadmap, reflecting the growing recognition that the solar-terrestrial environment is a significant part of the environment in which human activities must take place.

Of equal importance is the inclusion of SIAEOS, the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System.

which will focus and enhance the already extensive research infrastructure in Svalbard, including those relevant to STP.

A little ray of sunshine for us...

Em and I are now proud parents!

2008-12-03T12:30:00.003Z

Our daughter seems to enjoy her new freedom of movement and likes to squirm more than she did in the womb!

D-day has arrived

2008-11-27T12:54:00.003Z

...and by 'D' I mean 'due'.

According to advanced medical science (best guess from scans) today is the day that my son/daughter is due to be born. Em is now at home on maternity leave but so far there is no sign of mini-Kav arriving.

This is good as I still need to assemble some furniture in the new master bedroom and I have a grant proposal to submit!

The end of an era?

2008-11-26T22:46:00.004Z

Woolworths is going into administration!

Where the hell am I going to get my Easter eggs last thing on Holy Saturday????

Inquiring after Science

2008-11-17T14:21:00.005Z

(Warning: long post!)
There have been a number of developments in recent days regarding science in the UK.

Paul Crowther points to Why Science is Important; "a collection of thoughts from leading scientists, public figures, ...and you." Paul himself, has a post on there as does John Womersley.

Another, more important development is that the IUSS parliamentary select committee has initiated another inquiry:

PUTTING SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING AT THE HEART OF GOVERNMENT POLICY

As the name implies, this is a potentially important subject and one that all UK scientists should pay very special attention to.

The deadline for written evidence submission is Monday the 12th January 2009. Although that seems some time away with the Christmas break coming up it is sooner than one might think in terms of working days. This is something that academics need to get involved in and we should pressure our representative bodies to respond to this ASAP; whether that be the RAS, IoP or whoever

Evidence is being invited on the following issues and I add my thoughts (under-developed as they are) after each section:

1.

whether the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Science and Innovation and the Council for Science and Technology put science and engineering at the heart of policy-making and whether there should be a Department for Science

Yes.

Obviously we are moving into interesting times regarding economic growth (or lack thereof) and under 'normal' circumstances one could argue that spending on science is a low priority. However I think it is time for a major rethink by government - relying on the city to drive the economy has not proved as reliable as this and the previous Conservative government might have thought.

Current speculation is that borrowing is going to shoot up in order to provide tax-cuts and government spending to further stimulate the economy. Whether this is the right approach I will leave for the economists to argue over but I would suggest that government seriously consider the need for a strong plank upon which to place the economy; a service industry seems to be undesirable at the moment and our industrial base is pretty much spent in real terms.

Our best hope is to keep moving in a direction that the government had at least been looking at: science and innovation. Most of the biggest problems facing the UK (and the world) today need science and technology solutions - investing in the infrastructure to drive more research and science now is one way in which the government can look ahead to the post recession future.

The best way to do this is to have a Department for Science, this would liaise with DIUS (or its successor) and education so as to maximise our ability to attract young minds to science. It also sends the message that government is serious about science and recognises the essential role it needs to play in the future of the UK. Remember, science is something that we are good at and have a reputation (however tarnished it might have been recently in certain quarters) for being good at. Extracting science from the same department as universities, or higher education, or business may seem an odd step but by separating it out it no longer competes for attention in an internal miasma ; rather it is in a position to work hand-in-hand with those departments on an equal footing and can contribute effectively to other departments (transport, environment, etc). Science is at the heart of most things, if only in the way that scientists are trained to approach problems; we need to recognise that and step up our commitment to science.

2.

how Government formulates science and engineering policy (strengths and weaknesses of the current system)

This is something I need to get into in more depth before properly providing an answer but I can sketch out some thoughts.

In principle Government decides how much it is going to give each area of science and then leaves it to the Research councils to sub-divide further; that is their interpretation of the Haldane principle. Recently they have invested in the environment (NERC) and health (MRC) whilst downplayed basic physics and engineering (STFC and EPSRC). This effectively sets policy and encourages 'losing' councils to look towards areas where they might attract more funding. This is not completely unreasonable since the government always has to have an eye to the economic and social problems facing the UK and marshall its forces (spending) where it perceives that it can do the most good.

Unfortunately government can sometimes maneuver itself into a position where it ends up doing more harm than good (cf. recent STFC debacle). Another example is David King, someone who has championed directed research at the expense of basic science - in my opinion a dangerous and short-sighted approach. Clearly government needs broader advice structures and ideally not people who play the games of politics; co-opted working scientists of mid-to high level career stages are the best people. The worst thing is for science to be directed by a narrow group (or even one person) as it provides no balance or checks. This is an issue for the research councils to consider as well; councils that try to interpret government policy rather than develop their own view with their user-base are in danger of limiting advancement.

3.

whether the views of the science and engineering community are, or should be, central to the formulation of government policy, and how the success of any consultation is assessed

Hell yes! See above.

But with a careful caveat. The temptation will always be there to champion for our own areas. Balance must be maintained and this means that we must normalise for the size of community. For example, it would be ridiculous to have a review of research that contained at least two different areas, one of which was much larger than the other. In a situation like that any metric would need to include a measure of normalization otherwise the larger community would simply swallow the resources of the smaller. This is a patently absurd state of affairs.

4.

the case for a regional science policy (versus national science policy) and whether the Haldane principle needs updating

An interesting question and not one I have thought too much about. A regional policy could be a way to offset the feedback loop that can damage science thoughout the country.

What do I mean? Good science and scientists are attracted to places where science is seen to flourish and attract funding [cough]golden triangle[cough]. Of course this means that funding shrinks from other places and without the resources to compete they will eventually fade away. The implementation of a robust regional policy would help to smooth this out by ensuring that competing areas remain and would solve some of the problems surrounding Harwell and Daresbury.

I think Haldane needs to be reviewed. As it stands I am concerned that it is broken since there seems to be a feeling that research councils are de facto arms of government rather than independent bodies.

5.

engaging the public and increasing public confidence in science and engineering policy

An important topic, without it, number 1 is moot.

6.

the role of GO-Science, DIUS and other Government departments, charities, learned societies, Regional Development Agencies, industry and other stakeholders in determining UK science and engineering policy

I think there is something to be said for learned bodies leading the way in policy formulation. At a lower level I have some concerns over research councils developing their own strategies; it makes more sense to me that relevant bodies should be funded to develop the strategy for them - this removes the onus from the council who can then move to the business of administering funds and facilities to fulfill that strategy. It also blocks the possibility that strategy is formulated by a select few who may or may not have an agenda. The same can be said for larger policy - steering is obviously required but by including all stakeholders in the decision making process we boost confidence in UK science policy and create transparency. It also provides the science and wider community (who are tax payers) the opportunity to feel invested in the process.

7.

how government science and engineering policy should be scrutinised

Heavily! Often! Carefully!

Obviously my comments are just random thoughts that I have bashed out on the fly. The science community as a whole needs to think carefully about these issues and contribute to the debate. We also need to rally the public behind us so that we can develop the scientists of tomorrow and build an science-economic model that is robust and enduring.

STFC being strategic

2008-11-01T14:23:00.004Z

The long awaited consultation on STFC's strategy is due in early December (h/t Paul). In the meantime they have issued their strategic framework which sets out:

where we are now, our vision and the principles under which we operate. This Framework has been distributed and discussed with our staff, and we are publishing it for the information of all stakeholder groups.

I have had a quick glance at the framework and noticed a few errors and so in the spirit of cooperation I have edited the first part of their introduction for them a little:

STFC has been in existence for 18 months, during which time it has ~~successfully~~ struggled to merged the two previous Councils,just about won wide grudging tolerance from stakeholders ~~endorsement~~ of a detailed Programmatic Review despite tough and often impenetrable funding decisions and significant ~~initial~~ ongoing and highly justified external criticism and internal discontent, and delivered through its staff and funded researchers an excellent and often world class science and technology programme, that could have been much better if we had worked with our community properly.

There you go, no need to thank me. It was my pleasure.

IoP meeting

2008-10-31T13:17:00.002Z

So did anyone go to the IoP meeting about the Wakeham review?

I was interested but was unfortunately too busy to make the journey, plus with Em being at 36 weeks gone I am getting reluctant to go galavanting off down half the country.

I did try to view the presentation on-line but one needed to log in to view it - something I had not seen mentioned anywhere. I assumed that this would be an IoP log-in and since I am not a member (long and dull story involving Ade, a belt and my enduring laziness) I asked Em to have a look. She had no success and by then it wasn't worth getting in touch to find out what I needed to do to view it.

I did find that if I kept hitting refresh I could see the slides, but that only gave half a show. Plus I was more interested in what was said in the discussion session.

So anything interesting happen?

Physics in danger of becoming male, white and upper middle class

2008-10-30T20:18:00.008Z

...says white, upper-middle class man.

Actually the article in the Times Higher Education says a bit more than that.

A recent informal survey of the UK STP community produced the following data:

As you can see the gender split shows some variation between grades and the numbers are not great but they are not as bad as one might think. On the whole STP seemed to be attracting women physicists such that the total percentage was about a third of all STP scientists in the UK last year were women.

This chart was taken from this report, which was submitted by MIST to the Wakeham review. Well worth a read if you are not sure why STP is worth doing in the UK.

Bailout? I think not.

2008-10-29T13:48:00.002Z

We all heard about the £9 million that STFC found down the back of their sofa. On the face of it its very nice and should alleviate some of the 'pain' yet we still have to see how the money gets spent.

However, I think a number of our colleagues in the wider astronomy community might secretly be hoping that additional cash will be found to plug the still gaping blackhole.

I think they are waiting in vain...

from the BBC:

Grants for pupils in England starting university next year will be cut because the government overestimated how many would be eligible for support.

The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills has admitted it has a funding shortfall of £200m, after improving financial support this year.

Oh dear, oh dear. Poor old DIUS seems to be having a bad year.

John Denham must be pulling his hair out after the past year of bad headlines. First they underestimate the amount of money needed to support STFC and now they underestimate the amount needed to support student grants.

The upshot is that DIUS are now looking to save money, first by reducing the income floor for studnet eligability and secondly via 'departmental savings'.

As far as research goes, there certainly won't be extra money to supplement STFC's budget just as most of us always thought.

A step up

2008-10-05T23:56:00.002+01:00

Well it seems that our friend Ian Pearson has not been punished for his tenure as science minister in DIUS, rather Gordon Brown has decided to promote him.

According to the BBC, Pearson is now the economic secretary to the Treasury.

Well, following the last CSR it is quite clear that Pearson know how to make economies so I am sure he will relish his appointment. Of course now he is in another ideal position to screw with us next time if he so desires, but without the visibility and chance of backlash.

His promotion make me feel quite confident that my opinion of the Prime Minister is correct.

Pearson gone, Drayson in

2008-10-03T23:26:00.004+01:00

The BBC is reporting that Lord Paul Drayson has been made science minister.

Drayson holds a PhD in robotics and is a successful businessman. This makes him ideal for pushing the government agenda of converting our science into economic payback.

This is not just a straight shoehorn in to replace the former minister, it seems to go hand in hand with an upgrading of the position:

Lord Drayson said his appointment represented an upgrading of the science minister's role. He is to attend cabinet and will chair a new Cabinet Committee for Science and Innovation. The committee's task will be to ensure integration across government.

Some endorsements have already come from the movers and shakers:

"We welcome this appointment and look forward to working with Lord Drayson, whose proven interest in technology can only benefit the UK engineering community," said Dr Scott Steedman, vice president of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

And Professor Colin Blakemore, former head of the Medical Research Council, added: "There's no doubt he's been very creative in recognising opportunities to move from basic research into innovation in his own career, so he chimes very much with the government's current focus on translational research.

"However, I do think he can be trusted to defend the investment needed for the basic research which is essential for innovation in the future."

Phil Willis has welcomed his appointment:

The Liberal Democrat MP Phil Willis, who is also chairman of the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills, said Lord Drayson could make an excellent advocate for science.

"We desperately need a champion like him in the run-up to the next spending review," he commented.

"At both the graduate and post-doctoral level there is a very serious shortage of scientists and engineers. Given that 70% of the 20:20 workforce have already left school, we need to convert people already in work to science and engineering skills.

"I hope Paul Drayson will grasp the seriousness of this and make it his priority."

Finally, the new minister's first words in the job seem to be encouraging, particularly the final quoted sentence:

"Young people need to be inspired into opting for science and engineering careers.

"Look at me - I have had a blast. I am out here racing cars because I was a successful biotech entrepreneur. That depended on me studying for a PhD, and that depended on me studying maths, physics and chemistry at A-Level.

"I was also inspired by cool projects in the 60s and 70s like the space programme, and we now need to inspire the next generation with similar cool projects."

At time of writing I cannot find information on the fate of Ian Pearson and I doubt we will ever know why he was shuffled out.

We can always speculate of course, perhaps the Prime Minister was less than impressed with the mighty clusterf*ck that occurred with STFC on his watch. Maybe he has been moved onto bigger and better things.

Who knows?

The Quiescent Sun

2008-10-02T13:06:00.004+01:00

By sheer coincidence there is an article in today's Financial Times regarding the current inactivity of the Sun. It is a nice article minus the hyperbole that seems to often surround discussion of this current solar minimum.

Back on Earth, the Sun’s inactivity ought to represent good news for the companies that operate satellites, run power grids or make terrestrial radio systems, which are all vulnerable to damage and disruption from solar storms. In one interpretation of its long-term implications, however, the effects could be far from benign.

True enough. The article does make the point that big storms can still happen at solar minimum and so complacency should be avoided. It reminds us of the Carrington event:

What astronomers believe was the most intense eruption from the Sun for several centuries took place in August 1859 during an otherwise fairly tranquil solar cycle. The aurora borealis or Northern Lights – the vivid photoelectric display triggered when solar particles hit Earth’s upper atmosphere – moved down from its normal polar haunts to put on a spectacular show as far as the tropics. Other effects included putting the world’s nascent telegraph network out of action for several hours.
If such a solar superstorm occurred now, it would cause tens of billions of dollars of damage to communications and navigational satellites and cause continent-wide electrical blackouts that might last for weeks, say Sten Odenwald and James Green, Nasa scientists who have analysed the 1859 event.

Nothing like this has happened in the Space Age, the closest was a big storm in October 1989. Of course knowing that events like these occur is no part of a justification for funding into investigating this highly important and societally relevant topic.

The CEO of STFC is on record as saying that if we lived in a world where a big storm had occurred STP would be properly regarded, but we don't live in that world so cutting funding is justified. Indeed others think that we STPers argue that the October 1989 storm is our main excuse for studying STP, a claim so asinine and moronic that it stunned a scientific audience into silence.

Anyway, climate popped up in the FT article:

Experts are reluctant to predict the consequences for Earth and its inhabitants because there are so many complex interactions between the Sun’s output, the planet’s atmosphere and magnetic field, and cosmic radiation from outer space. Some climatologists say that, over a period of decades, a quieter Sun means a cooler Earth, although the relationship between solar activity and climate is particularly controversial.

Controversial is not a word I would use. Rather I would suggest that the relationship is poorly understood.

There is a clear link between the Sun's activity and climate and contrary to what some believe this is accounted for by climatologists. There have been some recent hypotheses that suggest that recent climate change can be placed totally (or nearly so) on the Sun (the article mentions this near the end) but the evidence has been far from compelling unless you have the 'eye-of-faith*'.

What is needed is a better understanding of the mechanisms by which the Sun affects the Earth environment so that we can put proper numbers and limits on the effect. By wanting to study the link most scientists have no agenda; we aren't trying to 'prove' that the global warming sceptics are right, nor are we trying to prove the manmade CO₂ hypothesis correct. Rather we just want to know what affect there is and how it works, maybe it is huge and dominates over anthropogenic effects (I doubt it) or maybe it is quite small but important for staving off the worst effects of CG during a solar-quiet period.

Of course, one side product of the quiet sun is that we have had lots of nice, sustained, coronal holes that lead to high speed solar wind streams and high latitude auroral displays. This is nice for my research as I am looking at energy input to the magnetosphere during these events and how it is distributed throughout the system.

Another interesting aspect of the solar minimum mentioned in the FT article is the hazards to manned space travel:

This quiet period would not be a good time to launch a manned space mission beyond Earth orbit, to the Moon or Mars, adds Prof Crooker. Astronauts would face the harmful impact of increased cosmic radiation, which would outweigh the reduced likelihood of solar storms.

It is easy to think that now is the best time to launch manned missions out beyond the protective magnetosphere but the truth is that the issue is more complex than that. At solar maximum the solar wind affords better protection from the constant, though relatively weak, bombardment of cosmic rays. Huge flares and CMEs at solar maximum can cause severe damage and are incredibly dangerous, but the sustained exposure to cosmic rays during minimum is arguably the more serious problem.

During transient flares and CMEs astronauts can hide behind appropriate shielding; with a constant bombardment of cosmic rays the astronauts would have to be hiding all the time or risk death (or aquiring super-powers).

The article was nice timing with the release of the Wakeham review, but totally unconnected. I have some thoughts on the Wakeham review report but they can wait until later.

*'eye-of-faith' refers to the ability to look at a scatter plot of data and draw a nice straight line through it representing where you think it should be.

Image of blank solar disc taken by SOHO/MDI, image of coronal hole from the Hinode X-ray Telescope; both hosted by spaceweather.com

Wakeham review released at 5pm....

2008-10-01T16:43:00.002+01:00

...along with the joint RCUK-Government response.

And I have to go to an antenatal class.

Bloody hell this government is clever, timing the release of the report so as to bury my response in tomorrow's news cycle when any snark I have will be stale and old hat.

Curses!

I suggest that the keen amongst you keep an eye on the relevant website.

Where have I been???

2008-10-01T15:43:00.002+01:00

Not so much on the blogging front in recent weeks. This is mostly because I have been pretty busy doing the research I am paid to do as well as a spot of travelling.

I went to the Space 08 meeting in London a few weeks back. That was, in my opinion, something of a mixed bag; some interesting things, some pointless things. The panel session was interesting, especially the chap who had an entertaining rant at the government. Also space weather got a big mention as an essential component of any endeavour to increase our presence in space.

Then I went to China for a week, a counry I have never had a huge desire to see. The meeting was something of a mixed bad (deja vu?), but I learned a thing or three and managed to scrape a few ideas into my head.

China itself was... interesting. Not a country I could fall in love with, though Shanghai was impressive. Of course I was a bit biased against as I spent my 32nd birthday travelling (and lost hours due to time zones). The best bit that made up for it was that I got to see my friend David who has been living in China for a couple of years now. Big Highlight.

Also, did you know that there is a Hooters in Shanghai?

I have, of course been keeping up with all things 'STFC-crisis'; sadly it has not been fixed or gone away, rather it has been bubbling away under the surface. You can see an example of this in Andy's blog; he starts on one topic and it rapidly skews around to STFC. I think some people still underestimate the strength of feeling out in the community about this. Some give the impression (intentional or not) that we should shut up and get on with our research; which is a wee bit rich coming from someone busily engaging in the discussion.

Anyway rumour has it that the Wakeham review of Physics will be made public today. That would be nice given it was presented to RCUK and DIUS a couple of weeks ago.

Lots of whispers and scuttlebut about that; particularly suggesting that recommendations were stronger but have since been watered down. Of course, there is little in the way of solid substantiation so who knows. We shall just have to wait and see what aria the fat lady chooses to sing and any other comments the Wakeham review panel might make.

A new start

2008-10-01T15:21:00.002+01:00

Well it's that time of year again.

Freshers Week is upon us here and following a few days of truly lovely weather it has been pissing down with some enthusiasm.

To be fair, it's only right that new students should really get a feel for the normal weather up here.

What is a little depressing is the mess that has already accumulated. I took a stroll to the centre of campus yesterday and was disappointed to see that the reams of cellotape are already being employed to hold up tatty posters on walls and columns. This ignores the swanky new notice-boards that have been put up for just such a purpose. Plus the hoardes of students handing out flyers are not a million miles away from the piles of discarded fliers, thrown almost as soon as they are taken.

On the plus side, I clearly don't yet project the world-weary look of most academics and researchers as I had to keep refusing the student-offer handouts.

Oh, and I am going to be teaching again. Only for a couple of days in February (plus mini-projects) though.

Well done Prof. Brian Cox

2008-09-10T23:20:00.002+01:00

I have just watched a short segment on Newsnight where Brian Cox rightfully gave Sir David King a well deserved spanking (to his face) for his recent comments.

King thinks that we should stop curiosity driven research and only look at solving specific problems in the world today. A reasonable argument at first glance with the difficulties that face us in the world.

But as Brian pointed out (and Sir Martin Reece pointed out in the Guardian) that argument could have been made at any point in history and we would be without much of the technological advances and knowledge that we have gained as a side product of curiosity driven science.

And on this day, actually, the day when for once physics is part of culture, and the headlines of every newspaper, every news broadcast in the world I don't think the President of the British Association of the Advancement of Science should be pouring cold water on that on this day of all days

Very well done Brian.

LHC switch on?

2008-09-10T10:42:00.002+01:00

Apparently some big experiment ins Switzerland was switched on today.

You would have thought there would have been at least some press attention or news about it.

EISCAT on the TV with Joanna Lumley

2008-09-08T12:45:00.004+01:00

Whilst perusing the Radio Times yesterday* I was pleasantly surprised to come across an article on "Joanna Lumley in the Land of the Northern Lights". This show was broadcast last night on BBC 1 at 9pm (it can be seen on iPlayer for a week).

It tells of how it has long been an ambition of Ms. Lumley's to see the Aurora and shows her achieving said ambition in the frozen Norwegian north.

Along the way she got to see reindeer herding, fish drying, fjords, the ice hotel and sunrise at the Svalbard Archipelago. All in all it was highly enjoyable as a bit of Sunday night entertainment.

Just to be clear over one point. When talking to the chap who pretty much owns Å in the Lofoten islands (16:10 into the show) he says that to see the Aurora it must be colder than it is.

Just to be clear whether the aurora occurs or not has absolutely nothing to do with how cold it is on the ground.

Nothing at all.

However, there is a good reason why it being cold helps to see the Aurora: clouds.

Norway is a country prone to rain and snow and with rain and snow come clouds. These are not helpful if you want to see the aurora flashing away well above them. However without the warming cloud layer, the temperature can plummet. I have been in Norway where one day it is 2° and pissing down and the next day the clouds move on and the temperatire drops to a pleasant -10° or less (it feels warmer as the humidity disappears).

Thus the colder it is the more chance you will actually see aurora if it is occurring.

I was particularly pleased to see the EISCAT radars (43:10 into the show)! They were not mentioned by name but the crew obviously payed a visit to the site in Tromsø and took some brief footage:

The city of Tromsø boasts unrivalled credentials in studying the aurora

This is true but remember that those radars also belong to us (at least until 2013).

Prof. Truls Hanson of the Tromsø Geophysical Observatory had a brief go at explaining exactly what causes the aurora. He made a small booboo by drawing the magnetosphere aligned with the Earth's rotational axis rather than the magnetic axis but we shall forgive him.

Ms. Lumley, after professing that she was starting to panic about the complexity of the explanation then summed it up thus:

...but I do now understand that the Earth is a giant magnet and its North and South poles attract the electrically charged particles towards them with spectacular results

which I guess is close enough for a show that was about the beauty and grandeur of the visible phenomenon and not a delve into the science.

Joanna got to see quite a spectacular display and was quite overcome. I have been upto Tromø a number of times on experimental campaigns and I can honestly say I never tire of watching the aurora.

It is quite fantastic.

I have stood in just a T-shirt in -10 degrees and watched, hesitating to dive inside for warmer clothes in case I miss something.

There is nothing quite like it and it really is indescribable.

We can talk about ribbons and curtains, we can show photos and movies that give a glimpse but that does nothing to truly convey the experience.

Until you are there, breathing in the cold air, feeling the hairs in your nostrils freeze yet not caring because you are confronted with a shifting, dazzling display that silently and majestically fills the sky, well, only then will you really get it.

Knowing how they work and what is really going on does not diminish the beauty, for me it intensifies it!

Understanding this process and the related effects has direct influence on our lives. I can make the case for how important this work is in terms of the economy and our daily lives (and indeed this case has been well articulated recently) but in reality I care about it because I want to know how it works!

It is the demand of wanting to know, to understand, that drives science forward, not spin-off technologies - they are just bonuses. If you think they are the important thing then you are not a scientist and you lack understanding of how the bulk of scientific discovery has progressed.

For me, in this age of tenuous funding and poorly thought through decisions it boils down to a simple point. As a civilized race how do we justify our ignorance of the things that go on all around us and are such an important part of our home? How can we ever hope to understand what goes on with other planets if we leave the job here on Earth half done?

I love what I do and it really excites me and it has the capability to excite many others. I just feel a little sad that some people fail to see this and that my time working with this wonderful phenomenon may soon be drawing to a close.

*That would be the one where Brian Cox suggested that if you thought the LHC was going to end the world then you were a twat.

Letter from DIUS

2008-08-28T19:16:00.002+01:00

I received a letter from DIUS today in response to a letter I sent back in January I think.

Whatever else it did, it mostly put me in a wee bad mood. Not because it wasn't polite, not because it didn't address the issues in my letter (though it didn't really do that).

No it put me in a bad mood because before getting to the meat of the issue it 'brought to my attention' some things that I 'might not have been aware of'.

Can you guess what they were? I'll give you a clue, it involved the figure 13.6%.

I know that the government feels the need to push its 'accomplishments' (scare quotes included deliberately) but do they really think that there is anyone interested in the physics funding issue who is not familiar with their talking points by now?

In addition, do they think we don't understand how those number truly translate into real terms?

Are they morons or do they think we are?

Oh. Dear. God

2008-08-04T10:45:00.001+01:00

Presented without comment.

hat tip Ryan

Peer review

2008-07-30T17:06:00.001+01:00

Peer review has been mentioned a lot within the discussions surrounding the STFC funding crisis. Notably it was mentioned during the House of Commons debate a few weeks ago, though much of the discussion came across to me as somewhat fuzzy in its logic.

In the debate there was much talk of whether peer review is the best way to go, how no system is ever perfect and how dangerous it could be for the select committee or anyone else to attack peer review.

I think this missed the point completely; the underlying assumption throughout the debate was that peer review describes a single process, whereas we all know that peer review is something of an umbrella.

This bothered me before when there were admonishments from some that the community should be careful when attacking peer review. It is a false answer; who in the community has really attacked the concept of peer review? Anyone? I have heard plenty of people attack how STFC implemented a process that they claimed was peer review. You see this is just more spin to deflect a real question and it bothers me that we have not heard more about this. So what is the real problem with 'peer review'?

In my view the issue with peer review in the STFC was not that 'peer review' as a concept was fatally flawed, rather that the practical implementation of peer review was rubbish in the eyes of many of us.

With the best will in the world a small panel with no advisory structure could not be considered to be effective peer review for the wide-ranging programme that STFC was responsible for. PPAN did the best they could but let's face it they are only human.

Arguments that these are intelligent people and so they were perfectly capable don't hold water; yes they are intelligent but that is not enough in a situation where community confidence is essential and where people's livlihoods may be impacted. You need intelligence and breadth of experience and familiarity; a proper balance.

When someone argues that smaller committees are better because they are efficient and don't try to please everyone you know they have not really thought through the implications of what they are saying with regard to a smaller panel. Yes, a smaller panel might reach a decision quickly but one lacks the confidence that they might reach the correct decision.

I note that peer review came up again in the letter from Phil Willis MP to John Denham:

It is not clear why the Government goes on to discuss peer review in this section, since peer review was not mentioned in recommendation 6 or its preceding text and was discussed later in the report. Be that as it may, the Government’s assertion that we criticised “the outcome of STFC’s peer review process” and “those researchers who have undertaken it” is an inaccurate paraphrasing of the serious concerns we raised in relation to STFC’s peer review system and decisions made by STFC. We did not criticise the outcomes of STFC’s peer review. Specifically:
(a) on the International Linear Collider, we did not comment on the scientific justification for withdrawal, but raised some concerns that had been put to us during the inquiry;
(b) on Gemini, we did not consider the merits of STFC’s decision, but the way it went about making its decision, or as it turned out, indecision, public;
(c) on solar-terrestrial physics, we questioned Professor Mason’s explanation for the withdrawal of funding, and suggested that STFC renege on that decision until its community had been properly consulted.
Neither did we criticise the members of the peer review panels. On the contrary, we acknowledged that STFC’s peer review committees “have a difficult job to do” and that “we do not doubt the integrity of the individuals who make up those Committees” (p 32 of our report).

Sadly the Secretary of State's reply is less than promising and seems to boil down to a game of statement of 'I'm not going to debate this with you, game over'.

I suppose he has been too busy running around letting everyone know that Gordon Brown is still great and we should stop attacking him because the conservatives are much worse.

The letter is worth reading in full as is the one to Prof. Keith Mason, who to his credit (though not much) gave a more fulsome response to the points raised.

Recognising service

2008-07-30T16:36:00.002+01:00

The Royal Astronomical Society has called for nominations for its 2009 awards. Today is the last chance to send in a nomination.

The award that stuck out to me was the RAS service Award. This is intended to:

honour individuals who, through outstanding or exceptional work, have promoted, facilitated or encouraged the sciences of astronomy or geophysics and developed their role in the life of the nation but whose achievement does not fall within the criteria of the Society's other awards.

I was thinking of nominating both Prof. Keith Mason and Prof. Richard Wade as I don't think anyone else has done quite so much in terms of uniting the astronomy and space science community.

Substorms solved - or are they?

2008-07-24T23:36:00.004+01:00

The THEMIS team has announced that the primary mystery of substorms has been resolved:

"We have discovered what makes the Northern Lights dance," declares UCLA physicist Vassilis Angelopoulos, principal investigator of the THEMIS mission. The findings appear online in the July 24 issue of Science Express and in print August 14 in the journal Science.

What is a substorm?

Well, broadly speaking they are massive bursts of energy from the night-side part of the Earth's magnetic field; here the field is stretched back into space, almost like a comet tail. Energy from the solar wind gets carried into this magnetotail in the form of increased magnetic field strength and energetic charged particles until at some point the energy is released, a good portion of it carried Earthward.

Some of those particles dive along the Earth's magnetic field and produce the bright and dynamic auroral displays (e.g. see the pretty picture) that can be seen off to the north. Some of them hang around a big longer in the inner magnetosphere and drift around to the dayside. Some even get accelerated and add to the population of relativistic electrons in the radiation belts; these are the really dangerous ones.

The primary question about substorms (though only one of many) is: 'how is the energy release initiated?'

There are two principle competing theories* and the big difference between them is the order in which physical processes occur in the magnetotail. It has been known for a long time that magnetic reconnection** plays a significant role (sorry to my astronomy colleagues as I have been reliably informed that you get bored hearing about this). What was not clear was whether this initiated the substorm process (or more accurately the substorm expansion phase) or whether it occurred after some other process had already started the ball rolling.

Over the years the different physics that occurs within the substorm have pretty much all been observed (well, as far as we know...), but knowing in which order they occur has always been tricky. To find that out we would need probes along the magnetotail recording simultaneously as the substorm occured, plus a whole network of ground based observatories so that we can interpret the satellite data in proper context.***

That's what THEMIS is: five satellites spread out along the tail with a huge and impressive network of ground instrumentation across North America (and a couple in Europe for good measure - one of them operated by a UK scientist). Now, it seems, this ground and space based mission has come good.

The discovery came on what began as a quiet day, Feb 26, 2008. Arctic skies were dark and Earth's magnetic field was still. High above the planet, the five THEMIS satellites had just arranged themselves in a line down the middle of Earth’s magnetotail—a million kilometer long tail of magnetism pulled into space by the action of the solar wind.

That's when the explosion occurred. A little more than midway up the THEMIS line, magnetic fields erupted, "releasing about 10¹⁵ Joules of energy," says Angelopoulos. "For comparison, that's about as much energy as a magnitude 5 earthquake."

And the satellites and ground-based cameras saw it from start to finish:

"For the first time, THEMIS has shown us the whole process in action—from magnetic reconnection to aurora borealis," says Sibeck. "We are finally solving the puzzle of substorms."

So it looks as if we can tick a box: magnetic reconnection is the first step in the process. Or at least that is my interpretation of this press release. This could be the answer to a question that has been around for over 30 years.

However, I would bet that this is far from the definitive answer.

I saw talks in the special Substorms in the Age of THEMIS session that we held at NAM that suggested that the story is actually a whole lot more complicated. One in particular hinted very strongly that two different mechanisms occurred in two substorms that quickly followed one another. I'm keen to see if THEMIS also sees another substorm; one that doesn't follow the same pattern as the February 2008 example. There is time yet.

Plus the substorm debate is far from over; there are many other unanswered questions surrounding the substorm: What triggers the reconnection and why does it happen when it does? What determines the location of the aurora? Why do periodic substorms have such large particle injection regions? etc.

For a look at a some recent work that addresses a different aspect of the substorm issue grab a copy of August's Astronomy and Geophysics, where one of the Rishbeth prize winners was looking at many substorms at Earth. The other prize winner was looking at a product of auroral substorms -kilometric radiation- but on Saturn, rather than Earth. This could be a very useful tool for identifying extra-solar planets that have a magnetic field, something that might well be a prerequisite for complex life.

*A primer on potential candidates

**Reconnection is the process by which two different magnetic fields (pointing in opposite direction) merge to produce a new configuration. In the Earth's magnetotail this means that the field close to the equatorial plane gets pinched together causing a change in shape that propels some of the charged particles Earthward. Essentially the field goes from being stretched out in a long tail, to looking more like a dipole field. This animation demonstrates the basic concept nicely.

***I hereby resist the urge to point out to STFC the stupidity of withdrawing from ground-based STP facilities. Except for this footnote...

What was that about STFC and Haldane?

2008-07-16T15:30:00.004+01:00

In an earlier post I mentioned that one of the most interesting things to come out of the Estimates Day debate on the Science Budget in the House of Commons was how they referred to STFC in the context of the Haldane principle.

Let me explain.

A question I have heard since this shortfall debacle began is over whether STFC is effectively just a branch of the government, representatives of the science community, or some mixture of both.

If the answer is that they are a branch of the government then it is assumed that they are responsible for exercising government policy, if not then they are beholden, somewhat, to the wishes of the community. Now of course even if they are not part of government they would be foolish to ignore government when they outline science priorities in the context of a spending review.

I think that discussion of the Haldane principle during that debate answered the question.

Since the government believes it is up to STFC to determine what it should spend its money on once the money is handed over it is quite clear that the government takes the view that STFC is a representative of the science community. Any suggestion that they are a de facto branch of government and responsible for executing government policy (outside of earmarked funds) is wide of the mark.

Now again there is the caveat that it would be an unwise research council that ignored government science policy in deciding how to spend its money; however ultimately the views of the scientists are pre-eminent in formulating how the money should be spent.

Of course one then gets into an argument over whether the research councils are truly representative or are we in the territory of a select few deciding what science to do. And who is to say which is the right way to go about its?

But that is another issue completely.

The ongoing struggle

2008-07-16T13:13:00.002+01:00

I've been a bit quiet lately but i thought it was about time I discussed a few things STFC related.

I want to point to a couple of very interesting pieces that have appeared in the media recently.

First is a letter to the Times from Prof. Andy Fabian the new president of the RAS. This follows the more positive stories that were appearing in the media concerning the £80m shortfall and the resolution of the programmatic review that seemed to save Jodrell bank.

Whether the folks at Jodrell liked it or not they had become a focal point for this struggle, a fact that highlights the high regard that excellent institution has in UK society.*
Andy highlights that although there is more money to keep Jodrell afloat (though the University of Manchester still has to find a lot of the cash to keep it running) there are plenty of things that are screwed.

Sir, Jodrell Bank undoubtedly now has a more promising future than seemed possible a few months ago (report, July 9) but the crisis for science funding is not over.

Andy also flagged the coming storm; not that the shortfall has not already caused a reduction in grant awarding:

At the same time a £33 million cut to university research groups’ grant funding will mean a steep cut in the number of postdoctoral and postgraduate researchers, so the facilities we still have will not be exploited in the way they should be.

Overall, an excellent letter.

More recently Prof. Steve Schwarz penned an excellent article for Research Fortnight called A lingering sense of struggle in the slog to learn physics lessons.

As chairman of one of the 10 specialist advisory panels that the STFC hurriedly set up in March after its own efforts at ranking projects had been roundly condemned by researchers, I left the meeting still stunned by the events that have unfolded since the council revealed an £80 million hole in its budget last November. And I remain fearful for the future of the UK’s physics and astronomy research.

Once more this looks to the future and wonders whether as well as identifying the lessons to be learnt from the recent balls up, STFC will actually learn thos lessons. Steve is not sure:

But has the STFC really learned these lessons, or does it merely now know what they are? The omens are not good.

Steve wonders about the upcoming strategy and how much input the community will have, and asks sensible questions about the way the new advisory panels will be set up:

Specialist advisory panels are being re-established; in fact, we have heard this for a while now, but implementation does indeed seem to be getting closer. We are told that these panels will be subject-based rather than facility-driven. This is a welcome sign—and a lesson learned. But will there be enough panels? Enough members? Enough influence to be seen as an effective route through which the community can channel its talents and aspirations?

Wise words about the need for adequate expertise in tensioning projects and facilities in the new STFC. The idea for a new model council with as few a people as possible to expediate decision making looks to have been shown to be a dud. You may get decisions made efficiently and quickly but it hardly inspires confidence that the right difficult choices are made.

Effective decision-making needs more than a small set of advisers to cover the enormous breadth of the programme, from running large facilities costing hundreds of millions of pounds at one end, through major international collaborations on fundamental science, to individual research grants at the other.

Prof. Schwarz also takes aim at the much lauded consultation process that followed the rankings in the programmatic review. I have mentioned some issues with this before but Steve was a chair of one of the panels and so has greater insight than most:

In fact, the process was much less effective than it could have been because the community was provided with scant feedback to indicate why projects were ranked where they were. The panels themselves also found information difficult to obtain.

Not surprisingly, community responses often merely re-iterated project objectives or successes. The few responses from projects initially ranked high generally praised the wisdom of that ranking; while the flood of responses from projects ranked low often vented obvious frustration and anger.

One gets the sense that there is less satisfaction with the process than has been aired recently. Let's face it, it did not help that the consultation came after the rankings. Better to have had an initial consultation - or at least solict advice from the wider community, followed by a consultation after the ranking. We have heard that prior discussion has been mooted for next time by STFC.

Steve's article concludes with something for us all to think about in this time of post-programmatic review, as things seem to be calming down:

This is not to smear the integrity of the small team of undoubtedly stressed-out advisers within the present structure. It is to condemn a top-down management style that is trying to operate a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach for the funding of both science and facilities within a financial straitjacket.

Will the promised Specialist Advisory Panels make a difference? Will they be given the influence to enable the scientific community to work with the STFC? As usual, we can only wait to be told.

It is essential that we have our say on how the advisory panels are set up and not least who goes on them. We must work to ensure that there is adequate representation enshrined within their formation and not just lip-service to the notion. To their credit STFC executives have said that they are only a phonecall or an email away.

*Amusingly I am Cheshire born and bred and have tremendous affection for my home county yet I have never visited Jodrell bank. My year missed out on that school trip.

The nuclear option

2008-07-11T14:28:00.002+01:00

Since Andy is now on sabbatical in the States he was not able to attend the town meeting on Tuesday. I was not able to attend either - mostly because I have work to do and it costs a bit to high-tail it to London for meetings; what remains of the funding that supports me can be better spent!

Anyway Andy points to a new furore that is bubbling away as the Nuclear scientists start to get vocal in the media over their loss of funding:

Hang on a tick though, the Telegraph seems to have a story about STFC destroying the country’s nuclear power capability !!! Naturally, STFC have put out a statement explaining that they are reponsible for the nation’s power stations.

Having read the STFC statement I think they have scored quite an own goal here. I can understand why they would want to nip more negative stories in the bud; just as they were probably hoping that this would all start to go away (especially given the positive press regarding Jodrell Bank that has appeared in the press). However they have gone the wrong way about it.

The branch of nuclear physics that STFC supports is the investigation of the internal structure of the nucleus and the nuclear processes that take place in stars (nuclear astrophysics) and does not concern nuclear power or nuclear engineering, or the building or decommissioning of power stations.

At a time when community morale is at an all time low the statement does little to bolster the nuclear community spirit. It won't win awards for attracting students and researchers who might be interested in nuclear physics.

More importantly it undermines any arguments for relevence to society and UK PLC. This is incredibly unwise in a period when we are told that we must demonstrate our worth to justify the funding that we receive.

This could have been handled much better.

Quote of the day

2008-07-11T14:19:00.002+01:00

The debate in the House of Commons on Monday night held some little gems but this was the best quote by far:

I was concerned that the STFC may have misinterpreted one of our recommendations, which was to improve communications. I do not think that that meant that it should improve its spin.

The discussion on the Haldane principle and how it applies was actualluy quite fascinating, not for whether Haldane was breached but rather for the context of STFC within that discussion. Very interesting to hear the government and political view.

Beatles Day

2008-07-10T16:28:00.002+01:00

Liverpool is celebrating its most famous sons with its first Beatles Day.

Look, at the risk of going all 'Boris Johnson', this is one thing that really bothers me*. Let's face it, every day in Liverpool is Beatles day. It is hard to escape it as it seems to be the default setting.

Liverpool has a long and interesting history, some of it not great, but there is a lot to be proud of in that city. Yet for years now it always comes back to the Beatles and it is getting really, really dull.

*Disclaimer: I was born near Liverpool and my parents were both born in Liverpool and grew up there.

An 'ambitious' programme...

2008-07-03T14:49:00.003+01:00

The results of the programmatic review and how it will be implemented have been released; the BBC already has a story about it. I am sure STFC will be unhappy that the Beeb has focussed on the negatives given that:

STFC has balanced its budget and agreed on a very ambitious and scientifically sound programme of funding,

according to embattled STFC CEO Keith Mason.

Hmmm, 'ambitious', thanks to a certain 1980s political sitcom doesn't that word have some different connotations? It's right up there with courageous.

So what is my take of this document?

I think that one of the most controversial lines will be this:

In the case of the ILC related projects and BaBar, where support will be withdrawn, it is expected that any existing specific project grants will be phased out and the level of the existing rolling grants reduced accordingly.

This points to the threat of clawing back money on awarded grants - a controversial measure and a dangerous precedent. Depending on the levels of clawback this could result in a showdown with the university VCs who won't like the idea of this sort of instability in funding.

In the general comments:

We emphasise again that all the projects in the programmatic review represent good science. Given the need to introduce high priority new projects into the programme, we have had to reallocate funding.

As always this is welcome and works against the not-quite-a-whisper campaign against how 'good' certain science was as a non-public explanation for its non-funding.

The consultation panels expressed some strongly felt views on the programmatic review process that was carried out in 2007-8. We believe that the end result of the process is a very reasonable one... There are however lessons to be learned

I am not sure everyone will agree with the sentiments about the end result but the next bit is promising.

Advisory panels for PPAN and PALS will be set up as soon as practicable, and call for nominations for panel members in the PPAN areas is being made. We note the recommendation of Science Board that future programmatic reviews should be conducted with some kind of consultation process as the first step; this could perhaps be done by using the advisory panel inputs.

This is a step in the right direction and whoever decided to scrap the old PPARC advisory panels just before a CSR bid and the second programmatic review ought to have considered their position. Frankly, to think that new structures could be set up in time and to blame PPAN and PALS for not having done it is both ludicous and unworthy.

Kudos to science board for suggesting a first step consultation in the next review. Perhaps someone could also suggest tieing the review to the CSR timetable. Why review every two years on a a CSR cycle of three years? It seems silly to me and I am at a loss to understand why 2 years was chosen.

So what about STP?

Well in short Solar-Orbiter is okay (and PPAN considered it higher priority over other missions contrary to the advice of the solar and STP community as represented by the ad-hoc panel) subject to ESA still wanting to do it. But S-O is in the far future and there is a gap to fill until then and that is where the current stuff comes in.

STEREO PLS and HINODE PLS will continue as agreed having moved up the scale.

Cluster, SOHO PLS and the UKSSDC will all aslo continue as before. This is good news as Cluster is the only magnetospheric mission that we have at the moment.

STFC are now wondering how to take the issue of data-curation forward. They need to develop a strategy for dealing with long-term data sets so that they don't just vanish in the future. It seems to be left to chance at the moment.

BiSON is gone and STFC, like PPAN, have failed to address the weird double standard that has been applied here. There are plenty of small instruments and projects funded through the grants-line that were not included in the programmatic review; hence many projects escaped the review that otherwise should have been included if we take STFC at their word:

We note that while the consultation panel recommended that BiSON should not have been considered in the Programmatic Review, PPAN could not accept this recommendation, believing all projects should be evaluated. That is correct: the Programmatic Review is intended to cover all projects and facilities in the STFC science programme.

STFC need to deal with this major discrepancy and very soon. If smaller instruments funded by the grants line should be in the PR then put them in the PR otherwise, rely on the rolling nature of the grants line (and I don't mean rolling grants) to determine whether an instrument is still worth funding. As it stands, the current model means that some instruments have to jump two hurdles whereas others only have one. Bold and broad statements such as the one above, fail to adress this.

There is a hint of good news for ground-based STP. Although the vast majority of our infrastructure has been condemned to history this actually puts in words the issue that future ground-based STP proposals should be judged on merit and not based on a throwaway line in a strategy delivery document.

We intend to follow the panel’s recommendations. EISCAT is supported until 2011 and until this time proposals for its exploitation will be considered on their merits. Proposals for the support of ground-based STP will also be considered on their merits.

The key thing here is to ensure that we are mentioned in the upcoming strategy document as otherwise the key 'fit to strategy' criterion will always drop us down the rankings in the future. As for EISCAT, I think STFC has put itself into a very sticky situation with asserting its right to withdraw in 2011 based on a non-withdrawal letter. Their interpretation of the ad-hoc panel's view on this has caused upset:

The consultation panel accepted the inevitability of UK withdrawal from the EISCAT subscription in 2011,

I am told that the panel has sent a letter to Walter Gear (chair of PPAN) challenging this (amongst other points) and copied it to Peter Knight and John Womersley. What STFC do about this is up to them but if they just ignore it then I am concerned what that says about their methods of consultation at a time when they are finally making steps in the right direction.

It is still unclear to me how PPAN could have reached that conclusion and that erroneous interpretation has propagated to STFC. I hope that a correction and a public apology to the panel will be forthcoming otherwise it is yet another body-blow to community confidence.

Finally on a sligtly different note:

Looking ahead, many of the arguments made for the topicality of this area of research because of its links to climate and the environment suggest that it would be appropriate to involve additional funding partners. (It is interesting to note that ESFRI has classified the EISCAT-3D upgrade project as an environmental, rather than a physical sciences, facility.) We encourage the community to pursue other sources of funds, including the cross-council Living with Environmental Change programme, and we will seek to play an enabling role in any such discussions.

This is an interesting and promising statement. The STP community is already investigating avenues of cross-council funding as it is such a cross-disciplinary effort. However, this means that the community has to push this and not become apathetic about the whole thing. Past experience tells us that cross-council initiatives tend to fail as one council pushes things off to another with no one wanting responsibility.

This state of affairs will not change unless there is a tremendous push from the community. Pressue and constructive engagement needs to be maintained.

I'm back and with a bone to pick

2008-07-03T14:05:00.003+01:00

...but not about the holiday, which was very nice. Found it harder to relax on this holiday than on previous, which is unsurprising given the current goings-on.

Anyway, the bone I wish to pick is with all those critics of the latest Indiana Jones film. Not necessarily the official critics (like Roger Ebert) who often quite liked it, but all those whiny people on the street and the internet who have been complaining how awful it is and how typical of Lucas. These are probably the same people who hated the Star Wars prequels to an irrational level (Yes I concede Jar Jar Binks is an annoying character but have you considered how irritating the droids actually are without the haze of nostalgia blurring your vision?).

For the casual reader beware, there are large spoilers ahead.

I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls on Tuesday night, long after most folks who care saw it.

I enjoyed it, perhaps not the same level of enjoyment as from Raiders or Last Crusade, but about as much as Temple of Doom (my least favourite).

It was very boys-own, pulp action story. I didn't even mind Indy surviving a nuclear explosion in a refridgerator. I got a little lump in my throat with the exceptionally affectionate references to Marcus Brody (the late, great Denholm Elliot) and Henry Jones Senior. I enjoyed the in-jokes that kept creeping in. I even remarked to my wife that Karen Allen still has a very nice bottom (assuming it wasn't a stunt woman in that scene).

I did not even mind about the McGuffin and the final reveal; it was faithful to the aura of the 1950s B-movie and action adventure story that it was trying to capture.

However, many so-called fans, have taken massive exception to this movie. There have been cries of too much CGI which might be justified. Although the prairie dogs and monkeys are clearly quite cool, they are hardly integral to the story.

What has really gotten my goat is the unbelievable amount of whining about the ending and the fact it involves aliens (or rather inter-dimensional beings) and that one of the characters claims to be psychic People are complaining that this is just silly and far-fetched.

That's right, the idea of aliens and psychics in an Indy film is silly and far-fetched.

Next thing you know they will have a man capable of pulling the beating heart from your chest while you can only watch in horror, and magical stones that lead to drought and starvation when removed from their place in a village.

Or, and imagine how silly this would be, there could be a 700 year old knight of the crusades guarding a magical cup that can heal mortal wounds and help you to live for ever as long as you stay hidden in a cave in the desert.

Better yet, what about a big box full of dust that can call down the power of God and melt people's faces? How stupid would that be?

So I have to wonder why none of these plit devices was considered silly, yet aliens hidden in a mysterious city of gold are? Is it just that we like our mythical mcguffins to be familiar to our culture? Is it an example that people are still wired to accept religious 'miracles' on some level even if they personally might scoff at the existence of a deity?

Who knows, but I wish they would just stop whining about it because I bloody well enjoyed it and I hope they make another one.

PPAN response to ad hoc panels

2008-06-14T17:34:00.006+01:00

Em and I are going on holiday tomorrow and as such we are busy packing today. Last holiday for 18 years that doesn't involve a caravan in North Wales!

I will be off-line for the next two weeks and so won't catch up with the government response to the IUSS committee until after the fires have started burning. Have fun with that, my prediction is here.

However I thought that I should say a couple of things about the PPAN response to the ad-hoc panel reports. Of course anything I say can be dismissed as a biased view but then that has to be applied to everyone across the science playing field.

First of all PPAN has had a tough job to do, they have to look across the whole programme and come up with recommendations on how best to balance it. This was done in the absence of complete expertise in the breadth of STFC funded science and without adequate (any real?) advice or input from the community until this exercise - they could only draw upon the limited information supplied by the PR process and their own experience. An oversight which we are assured will be addressed in the future.

Bully for the future, tough shit for the present.

Secondly this consultation exercise was taking place at the wrong time. There should have been something like it (for longer duration) before PPAN was forced to issue its prioritisation list. The community engaged in this exercise but I know that many of us were concerned that it was still deeply, deeply flawed. This is not a good thing considering the damage that can (will) be done to the science programme. My concerns deepen when one considers that the panels were told not to re-do the programmatic review; community input is already curtailed in its effectiveness.

Obviously my experience is somewhat limited to the Solar and STP report and, as a casual observer, a few things leap out at me:

1) The opening sentence is a curious beast

PPAN was pleased to note that the consultation panel broadly confirmed the prioritisation order of Solar Physics & Solar Terrestrial Physics projects within the overall programme.

I am not sure this is the case, perhaps someone else who has read it can point out where this interpretation came from. It is also curious that the first sentence was very similar to sentences in the other responses: e.g. particle physics, astrophysical plasmas, space science and exploration. Sometimes there is only one way to say the same thing. Does it hold true in those cases? Is 'broadly' broader than I thought?

2) I am pleased to see that PPAN have boosted STEREO up the rankings. Quite frankly given that both Hinode and STEREO had only just started operations when the review began it was a ludicrous decision to include them. If the programmatic review is to continue to be a thorn in our side on a two-yearly basis (rather than tied to the same cycle as the CSR, for example) then I suggest that some method is formalised to exclude brand new missions. To PPAN's credit they had attached caveats to their original rankings. Sadly with the removal of ground-based STP we could have an excellent opportunity to view incoming space weather events and almost nothing to see what effect they have on Earth. That, ladies and gentlemen, is joined up thinking.

3) The issue of BiSON is a curious one. The panel pointed out that it is an instrument (like several others I am aware of) that is funded through the rolling grant process. This explained why its user stats were low in comparison to other instruments (question for PPAN - what method did you use to normalize user stats between communities? STFC won't tell us). The panel argued that it should be removed from the review on that basis otherwise why hadn't other projects been reviewed. PPAN's response:

PPAN could not accept this recommendation as it believes all projects should be considered in the Programmatic Review.

Huh? But clearly PPAN is not considering all projects. I want to make this clear, this is either a massive oversight somewhere in the process or else there is a crazy double standard in place that has not been thought through. This must be clarified immediately because as things stand this makes no sense at all and just reinforces the very wide (and believe me it is wide) community view that the process is fundamentally flawed.

4) The real kicker in the PPAN response:

The consultation panel accepted the inevitability of UK withdrawal from the EISCAT subscription in 2011,...

They did what??? I have read that report and can find no evidence to back this assertion. In fact if we inspect the recommendations from section 4.3.3 which dealt with EISCAT we see the following:

1. STFC clarifies with EISCAT the legal status of its option to withdraw on 31 December 2011.
2. STFC conducts a more complete and accountable review of EISCAT involving consultation with other stakeholders including NERC, Government (DEFRA, MoD, FCO), the international STP community, and EISCAT itself to consider wider national interests and alternative options for support.
3. For whatever the duration of the EISCAT subscription, existing grants should continue to be fully supported and assessment of new proposals associated with EISCAT should not be disadvantaged in the STFC review process by a low priority label.

Nowhere in that little lot is the 'inevitability of EISCAT closure mentioned. Whoever put that comment in the PPAN response needs to consider their reading comprehension skills or explain where they drew their conclusion from, because at the moment it looks as if they are just making shit up.

Point one is the continuing saga of the non-withdrawal withdrawal. The terms of the EISCAT agreement that the UK signed were a rolling 5 year commitment - you have 5 years left to pay as a member after you issue a notice of withdrawal. After signing this PPARC sent a letter saying that they wished to retain the right to withdraw but that letter also stated that it should not be considered as a withdrawal letter. By my understanding this has no legal standing, it is an attempt to circumvent signed agreements outside of the framework of said agreement.

The first sentence of point three indicates that the panel has not accepted the inevitability of withdrawal by 2011 since it clearly describes the duration as ambiguous by the context.

This is big booboo.

5) On the other hand the following is most welcome and we must thank PPAN for adding this level of clarity that has been sorely lacking so far in the process:

...but wanted the AGP to be advised that this did not imply ALL ground-based STP research should not be funded. PPAN accepted this comment and agreed to advise the AGP that ground-based STP grants should be considered on their individual scientific merits

How many people were put off putting in proposals in this round that would have used ground-based techniques? We might never know. We do know that decisions have been made in the past that included a consideration that the UK no longer did ground-based STP.

So to sum up, I am less than impressed with this process. It is much as I feared.

But now I am going away and when I come back I look forward to seeing how much shit has hit the fan.

More commentary here.

site stats and reports

2008-06-13T19:28:00.003+01:00

Following the release of the reports and PPAN response more folk are popping over here to see what I have to say.

That's nice but once again I am caught on the off-foot as I ahve many other things to do rather than provide a substantial analysis. I will say that I am less than impressed with the PPAN response to the ad-hoc panel report.

One sentence takes some stretching to make it fit as an interpretation of what the panel said. More later if I get the chance (which I doubt).

The wait is almost over...

2008-06-12T10:38:00.005+01:00

[UPDATE 2: 01;30 13/06/2008

And is if by magic... the shopkeeper appeared]

[UPDATE: Still Waiting - 12:45 13/06/2008

Apparantly my source sucked.

Well, that's not fair, rather, the source of my source sucked and that is a bit worrying considering who that was. So much for 'best authority'.

I wonder if said documents are already on the STFC server but with no links yet. We could all have a game of "guess the exact URL"; it does occur to me that for all their failings in so many aspects, STFC manage to do security and secrecy really well. Considering the track record of other government agencies on that score, perhaps they should give themselves a pat on the back.]

Following the announcement that STFC would make public the reports from the ad hoc panels regarding the consultation to the programmatic review things have been somewhat quiet.

Initial rumours were that they would be released after they were presented to PPAN/PALS. However they failed to materialise and we then heard that the release was delayed until "factual errors" had been corrected. They would still be released before the 1 July Council meeting.

It is not clear what these factual errors were but it would seem they have now been corrected.

I now have it on the best authority that the panel reports will be published on the STFC website tomorrow morning, along with the PPAN/PALS responses to the reports.

Releasing early can only be good. By providing the community with the same material that Council and Science Board are given we can judge their final programme decisions with confidence that we had all the information.

Keeping anything totally secret at this stage would be monumentally stupid.

Government response to IUSS

2008-06-11T17:37:00.003+01:00

I see that the government response to the IUSS select committee report will be published at 11 am on Tuesday 17 June 2008.

I suspect that it will say something along the lines of:

we gave STFC a 13.6% increase in funding, blah, blah, blah,
we stand by the Haldane principal, STFC must decide how to spend its money, blah, blah, blah,
life is good and everything is rosy, blah,blah,blah,
Government has responded by instigating a review, blah, blah, blah,
complete confidence in STFC and its management, blah, blah, blah

Have I missed anything out?

Euro2008

2008-06-06T23:16:00.002+01:00

Well, here we go! We are on the eve of the start of this great footballing competiti....

Who am I kidding?

I just don't care.

Really, seriously, I don't care.

And why should I?

England aren't in it; neither are Wales or Scotland. Northern Ireland isn't in it. None of the home countries are taking part in this competition and as such I couldn't give a toss about it. There is no hook there to reel me and the thousands others into watching it. We have no reason to care about the result (except perhaps that old desire to see Germany lose).

However, the BBC seems to think we should care.

Of course they want us to watch the matches they are spending money on and have come up with an advertising campaign hinged around the question of 'who will we support?'

Well, no one.

Because no country I care about supporting is in it.

Now there will still be lots of interest from many football fans out there who just love the beautiful game, but seriously, how are we supposed to get excited about a competition we have no chance of winning because we are not even in it? Don't get me wrong, I like football (though I support Everton), I used to enjoy playing it at school, I like watching my team play and I really enjoy watching my national squad playing (did I say enjoy? I must be a masochist). But I find it difficult to get behind a team that I have no sense of involvement with and as such I don't watch every televised match going (unlike certain friends of mine). I don't religiously watch Sky SportsNews to find out every detail of every player who farted within the last 10 minutes*.

I don't mind that quite a few folk will watch and enjoy Euro 2008 (though due to circumstances I had not thought through I am going to end up watching the opening games tomorrow) but the advertising campaign has been somewhat relentless and there are quite a few of us fair weather fans who couldn't give a stuff because our team is not playing.

It's not just the TV and radio adverts though, the campaign is being waged on all media fronts.

Here is what Gill Hudson, editor of the Radio Times, had to say:

With our national squads firmly on the sidelines, you might think that no-one is going to be witness... ...But you might well be wrong. Given the number of European players currently in British teams, there's more national interest tied up in the European squads than at any other time in footballing history...

What complete rot. Who cares?

When England play (as one example) there is a massive increase in interest from people who at other times would not watch football if you paid them. This sense of national pride can be a huge driver (see Tim Henman/Andrew Murray at Wimbledon).

This year without that I will bet that there will be less folks watching matches in pubs than there were at the last championships; there will be less sick days taken by folk desperate to get home and watch the matches during the day.

I know I won't be watching religiously. In fact I am off on holiday for two weeks next week. Perfect timing I say.

* I think it was Terry Pratchett who once observed that if a child enjoys reading fantasy and/or sci-fi, has posters of Lord of the Rings festooned throughout his bedroom and plays Dungeons and Dragons they tend to get branded as nerdy and a bit worrisome. However if a kid has a bedroom decorated in all shades of Manchester United and sleeps under a Manchester United duvet and only reads fan-zines and game programs society seems to think that is healthy.

2008-06-05T09:58:00.002+01:00

Well I have been a day out all week.

It was Tuesday that was funny, not Monday. This has now been corrected.

On the plus side, for me the weekend comes sooner...

Doh!

Over. At. Last!

2008-06-04T02:10:00.004+01:00

So here I am pulling a late-nighter and attempting to get some extra-curricular sciencey support work done and I have one eye on the news out of America:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president, according to CNN estimates, making him the first African-American in U.S. history to lead a major-party ticket.

Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday will tell supporters he is the Democratic nominee, according to his campaign. Obama picked up a slew of superdelegate endorsements on Tuesday. Those endorsements, combined with the delegates he's projected to receive from South Dakota's primary, will put him past the 2,118 threshold, according to CNN estimates.

Thank God for that. I thought this primary season would never, ever end. And in some ways it hasn't yet:

His remaining rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, does not plan to concede the race Tuesday night, campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told CNN -- but one of her leading supporters said "a moment of truth" was at hand.

Truth be told, Hillary has not had a chance of winning for some time now, but she has doggedly stayed in the race. To what end? Well there have been all sorts of rumours of a bombshell that would destroy the Obama campaign but none of them panned out. Plus there was the whole fiasco with Michigan and Florida, which was quite unbelievable; the way Clinton turned about face over agreeing that Michigan did not count, to insisting that it must was incredible to behold.

Now it would seem that Hillary has managed to high-jack Obama's turn in the spotlight with the media concentrating on whether she will be VP or not.

Of course between now and November we can enjoy all the mud thrown between the Republicans and the Democrats.

Laugh out loud MondayTuesday

2008-06-03T13:01:00.004+01:00

The comment section over at Andy Lawrence's e-astronomer blog can be a mixed bag of entertainment and annoyance (just like most blogs where people comment). However, today I discovered a little gem courtesy of 'Chas'.

Sadly I was too late to view it first hand but the idea of it just made me laugh.

So I offer it for you to enjoy:

Comment 1:

Chas Says:
June 3, 2008 at 10:03 am
Here is biography of Richard Wade on the STFC website:

http://www.scitech.ac.uk/About/Strat/Council/wade.aspx

Try clicking on his photo. Is this a plea for help?

Comment 2:

Chas Says:
June 3, 2008 at 10:49 am
Someone at STFC is clearly monitoring this blog far too closely!

Clicking on Richard’s photo previously went to an image that read “Replace Me”:

http://www.scitech.ac.uk/images/replaceMe.jpg

Within minutes of posting the last item the link was changed…

Too funny.

As an aside, I know that I occasionally have bods from STFC wandering over to my site. No idea who they are but they must have been somewhat disappointed with the content recently.

News

2008-06-02T23:01:00.002+01:00

It has been some time since I last posted and for that I apologise. My mind has been other things, somewhat more important than the STFC debacle. I was in Finland doing some proper science and have been attempting to keep that trend going. Plus I find that the urge to blog comes in peaks and troughs, and recently I have been in one of the troughs.

However there is another reason why I have not been caring about current science affairs. Some of you will know already but for those that do not I am happy to announce that Em is pregnant.

Come late November, all things going well, we will be welcoming a tiny new addition to our family. This came as something of a surprise but a very welcome one. Em and I are really happy.

Life style changes lie ahead, I feel. Probably have to play less Halo.

Vista UAC

2008-05-12T12:22:00.004+01:00

Since I got my new work computer a while ago I have been using Vista. I have to say that so far (touch wood) I have had few problems with it.

I think the fancy 'Aero' display stuff is a little bit laughable - does anyone really have to shuffle through 3D style windows to determine which one to select? Though the real time previews of minimized windows on the task bar is kind of cool.

The one thing that has been irritating is the fact that whenever I try to do something a little bit different, like open non-microsoft software the computer locks and asks me whether I am sure I want to perform this action. This is the UAC - User Account Control.

Ryan wrote a good post on this which also led me to this Mac vs. PC advert:

I really like the last line.

It is frustrating but the worst thing about it is this:

"The reason we put UAC into the (Vista) platform was to annoy users--I'm serious," said Cross, speaking at the RSA Conference here Thursday. "Most users had administrator privileges on previous Windows systems and most applications needed administrator privileges to install or run."

So according to Microsoft Product Unit Manager David Cross, it was a deliberate attempt to annoy users.

Cross claimed that annoying users had been part of a Microsoft strategy to force independent software vendors (ISVs) to make their code more secure, as insecure code would trigger a prompt, discouraging users from executing the code.

This strikes me as a highly dumb policy. Cross claims that 88% of users have not turned UAC off and 7% of users don't just click 'yes' showing that they are considering their actions in light of the warning. My analysis of these figures would run a little differently.

How often have you initiated something only to cancel it shortly afterwards, be it a download or and install of just opening some software? It doesn't happen all that often to me but it does happen enough for me to remember doing it. I suspect that 7% represents something similar; if anything UAC is a handy moment to reconsider. Of course for 93% of teh time it is a royal pain in the arse.

As for the 88% of users still running it? Well I suggest that a lot of those users are those who don't have more than a basic understanding of how to run windows to do what they need to do. They use the internet, read emails, maybe play some games and use word processors. They might have tried to turn the annoying feature off but that takes a bit more effort than unselecting a feature in a simple control window. From Ryan:

Turning off this “feature” walks you through the depraved sadism that must exist in the minds of Microsoft Developers. I could really feel their contempt for me as a user when I first went to the Windows Security Center and found User Account Control listed there, set to “ON,” with no way to modify it.

I imagine that many would fall at this first hurdle. I certainly know users who would. Ryan found no clues in the “How does User Account Control help protect my computer?” help topic. You can do it though, be enlisting outside expertise:

So, of course, I consulted that great oracle of how to’s for usurping Microsoft’s bureaucracy, Google, and found this article, which directed me to “User Accounts and Family Safety.” Where I was able to disable the feature, after, of course, being informed that something was trying to disable User Account Control and clicking OK.

Not really straightforward. Plus after turning it off you get a warning at boot-up. I suspect that many folks worried about security might then turn it back on again as it is akin to being warned that your firewall is disabled or Norton is not working.

So after all that, it should be clear that the 'annoyance policy' is successful.

UAC is annoying.

However, it is only 50% successful because I will bet that most users get annoyed with Microsoft rather than third parties. It is microsoft vista that throws up the irritation and are conspicuous in this, not the 3rd party software manufacturers.

This is an example of backward thinking at its worth. Especially since I only recently learned of their rational for doing it. And even with this knowledge I am still irritated at them.

It's nannying of the worst kind. They should rename it the User Account Lack-of-Control.

Microsoft and Labour should pool resources; then they could come up with really bad policies in an efficient manner.

One has to wonder if the bright Microsoft spark that came up with UAC has Steve Job's number on his iPhone.

Changes

2008-05-09T21:18:00.006+01:00

I've been in Finland for 3 weeks now and I have been fortunate enough to be here as winter turns into spring. The snow is melting, days alternate between hot and cold and the ice in the river has melted. Here let me show you.

This is a view along the river taken on the 24th April 2008. As you can see the river is totally frozen over. A couple of days later we were drilling ice-fishing holes further downstream and digging a swimming hole for a colleague. I can tell you that the ice was good and thick.

Now this was taken on May Day. You can see that there is a lot more running water. Now it is not totally clear whether all the ice was melted or whether I was seeing surface water that had flown over the ice. I suspect it was a bit of both. The ice was still hanging tight to the shoreline though there is a beautiful fault line indicating a fracture in the ice.

And just a few minutes ago I went and had a stroll to the river. It's beautiful here in the evenings. It has been raining, just a short while ago and the forest smells like, well, like wet dog actually, for some reason. However, the birds are singing and the sunset was marvellous.

I took another shot looking down stream and you can see that the ice is gone (I was stood a few metres further upstream for this one). The snow is also mostly gone except in those places where it was piled high by snowploughs.

Of course now the mosquitoes have begun to arrive. So far I have seen a couple and they seem big and sluggish. I have been told there is a smaller variety and when they arrive I will know about it!

2008-05-08T21:53:00.002+01:00

Great tits cope well with warming

Well.

There you have it.

How they must have laughed in the BBC News offices.

I note it was one of those Science and Nature stories that even made the front page.

I hope that you are all proud of the way that I have managed (and only just, dammit) not to tap this rich vein of comedy gold.

I don't know which hurts the most...

2008-05-06T12:01:00.002+01:00

From the BBC:

Stoke clinched promotion to the Premier League as Leicester went down to the third tier of English football for the first time in their 124-year history.

Oh who am I kidding, I know exactly which one hurts the most.

Now I could be wrong. but...

2008-05-02T08:55:00.002+01:00

somehow I feel that science funding woes are going to be low on the priority list for the government today.

And so the news cycle turns...

Perhaps Michael Merrifield has a point:

I would therefore suggest that we forget all about CSRs, and start working on Tory science policy.

Still no analysis here

2008-04-30T13:22:00.004+01:00

...but there are community views all around.

Andy Lawrence:

If you were expecting a whitewash, think again. Its pure Semtex.

Stuart at the Astronomy Blog is looking to the future:

I hope the situation improves soon and everyone can get back to doing some real science.

Chris Lintott seems unsure of the criticisms levelled the executive:

And that’s it; the conclusion is nasty - calling for substantial changes in the way the STFC is run, and questioning Keith Mason’s ability to carry out these changes. I know that others will jump on these, and who knows, they may be right to do so. It’s a difficult call from my position, but to be honest I don’t care who is in charge. If we can just hang on until the Wakeham review, then the report would have done a great deal of good.

Short and sweet from Chesneycat:

Hell, YEAH!

and

Abso-bloody-Word.

e_pepys with a view from the inside:

I am impressed by how they seem to have grasped the essential issues and make excellent recommendations (and not just those that say we should be fully funded).

My take?

I think the report does a good job of getting to the root of the problem.

Yes I have lambasted STFC and its embattled CEO but the issue has always been bigger than that; I have often described it as a two pronged problem.

On the one hand you had the major cock-ups in handling the situation by STFC and on the other you had the settlement from DIUS and their inability to recognise the problem at any stage throughout this process.

In the comments to his latest blog post Andyxl had this to say:

You could see all this as a classical tragedy. The fall is determined both by the characters intrinsic flaws. and the historical dilemma they find themselves in.

which has merit as a description of the situation.

There are plenty of good recommendations in the report that should be followed up, though I am uninspired by the initial two responses from STFC, the first from the CEO and the second from council (on which the CEO also sits). I was particularly gobsmacked by this:

The report calls for changes to STFCs management structure. This was addressed in February when our new executive board was announced. A restructuring of STFC is being implemented by Professor Richard Wade, STFC Chief Operating Officer

You see the report says:

We do not have any confidence that rearranging the responsibilities of the existing staff will solve STFC’s problems. There is, as noted earlier, immediate need for a Communications Director. However, the management failings at STFC go deeper than this. The events of the past few months have exposed serious deficiencies within STFC’s senior management, whose misjudgements could still significantly damage Britain’s research reputation in this area, both at home and abroad.

See paragraphs 106 and 107.

Note that the committee is saying that the rearrangement done in February was not enough. Yet in rebuttal to this Keith offers the argument that he has already addressed this by rearranging the management team in February.

Can he not see how ridiculous that is? I would love to see how John Stewart of the Daily Show would cover this.

My only conclusion from Keith's response is that he is treating the report with the same scorn that many in the community feel he treats us.

Anyway, there you go, you got a little bit of analysis from me after all.

More to come I am sure...

The wait is almost over...

2008-04-29T23:40:00.002+01:00

...and anyone expecting a detailed analysis of the IUSS report at 00:02 BST from me is going to be sadly disappointed.

I have seen said document and I am likely to comment on it at some point tomorrow but I am not going to be preparing anything until then.

Quite frankly I have been busy doing some exciting research and having pleasant out-of-work time doing different things.

I shall sit back and enjoy the potential shit-storm that might (or might not) materialise tomorrow. I wonder whether Newsnight will do a follow up piece?

It's the final countdown (do-le-do dooo, do-le do do do)

2008-04-29T08:44:00.004+01:00

Quite a few physicists (and other scientists) in the UK have been anxiously waiting for the report from the IUSS select committee inquiry into the science budget allocations.

Well the wait is almost over, and just to help crank up the tension I present the IUSS report countdown clock:

&amp;lt;a href="http://www.7is7.com/otto/countdown.html?year=2008&amp;amp;amp;month=4&amp;amp;amp;date=30&amp;amp;amp;hrs=0&amp;amp;amp;ts=24&amp;amp;amp;min=1&amp;amp;amp;sec=0&amp;amp;amp;tz=60&amp;amp;amp;lang=en&amp;amp;amp;show=dhms&amp;amp;amp;mode=r&amp;amp;amp;cdir=down&amp;amp;amp;bgcolor=%23CCFFFF&amp;amp;amp;fgcolor=%23000000&amp;amp;amp;title=Countdown%20To%20IUSS%20report"&amp;gt;Countdown To IUSS report&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;

And for those of you who fail to get the reference in the title (shame!), a special treat can be found here. For those of you who do get the reference, spare yourselves...

A grand day out

2008-04-28T22:42:00.007+01:00

So last week we went wandering across a frozen lake; on Sunday past we went blasting across one on snowmobiles!

We headed through some light wood, across a frozen lake and then through some thicker forest before stopping for lunch at the top of a high hill.

The view was quite special. That big white expanse was the lake that we were crossing in the previous picture.

One minor drawback of staying out here is that you rarely get to see the horizon because of all of the trees; for someone who grew up by the sea and lives near there now. this can be an issue.

The view from the top of the hill solved that bit of yearning for a bit!

Anyway here is where we stopped for lunch; a shelter and fire-pit for public use with a well kept woodstore and even an out-house!

Do such things exist in the UK? Do they remain vandalism free? I guess that if they are remote enough they would.

The fun did not stop there, we also had sauna and cut a hole in the ice for ice swimming. More of that later.

Ice fishing

2008-04-28T22:35:00.004+01:00

I mentioned last week that I had been ice fishing.

Here is photographic evidence!

Photo courtesy of our host here in Finland who deserves better than to be associated with this blog!

I'm wearing the hat not because it was cold (note the discarded coat behind me) but because it was very bright and my skin likes to go red very quickly.

Especially the skin in my rapidly growing bald spot...

Tee hee

2008-04-28T22:02:00.005+01:00

Long time readers of this blog (helloooo, are there any?) who remember the early days and my (now dwindling) fascination with US politics (ah the much missed Cabal days) will understand why I love the idea of this and why each post just makes me giggle more.

Of course I have just been in the Sauna with a few beers so I may have more of a predilection to giggle than usual.

By the way, if you have come here looking for comment on the IUSS report on Science Budget Allocations then you can wait until Wednesday.

There ain't no way I'm breaking that embargo!

And. They're. Off! Yippee Kay Yay mother f*****

2008-04-25T11:05:00.002+01:00

This has got to be one of the most disturbing news items ever written:

Die Hard star Bruce Willis is tipped to play Formula One commentator Murray Walker on the big screen.

This is the most bizarre casting ever:

Famous action movie star Bruce Willis relaxing after a hectic day's shooting

Renowned racing correspondent Murray Walker enjoying his retirement.

OK, OK, I get it, all bald men look alike.

I really want to know if Bruce can pull off Murray's distinctive voice. And whether he will be fine saying line after line of dialogue in a Walker stylee.
I will be very impressed if he can capture that almost-wetting-himself excitement if it looks as if two cars might be within 1 foot of each other. And if he gets to smack the actor playing Nigel Mansell on the bonce.

Anyway the story just gets worse.

'How much worse?' I hear you ask; this much worse:

In the film, the character is expected to narrate the tale as well as feature alongside Schumacher.

AHHHHHHH! He's retired, he was good but not that good! How would a story like this interest an American audience who hardly care about F1 anyway? Especially given that their biggest memory of Schumacher is probably when he cocked up the finish of the 2002 US grand-prix by gifting it to Barichellos

Willi Weber, a former Formula One champion and Schumacher's agent said: "Bruce Willis would certainly do Murray justice."

What? On which plane of existence? Is it because of the striking similarity in muscle tone, build and bone structure? Or just because they are both bald?

And worse:

Weber added: "A Hollywood producer is interested. It would be called The Michael Schumacher Story, with him as the main actor."

AHHHHHHHH!

And the only voice of sanity in this? The man himself, Murray Walker:

Walker admitted to being a bit "shell-shocked" when he found out that Bruce Willis was going to play him in the film.
He said: "I had to make sure when looking at the calendar that it was April 25 not April 1."
He said jokingly: "I always regarded Bruce Willis as a mirror image of myself, don't you know...a much younger version though."

St. George's Day

2008-04-23T14:45:00.005+01:00

Traditionally this is the day when all true Englishmen simply ignore that it is St. George's day and do nothing to celebrate.

In fact if you want to truly revel in your Englishness it is helpful to completely forget that it is the day of your patron saint and go about business as usual.

Of course it is essential that you get completely rat-arsed on St. Patrick's day!

For the record...

2008-04-23T07:54:00.005+01:00

Things on the STFC funding crisis front have quietened a bit in recent weeks.

Obviously the ad-hoc advisory panels are busily sifting their way through the mountains of submissions they have received in an attempt to provide community input to the decisions on what facilities (and programmes) to close down.

But although it may be quiet it is not silent out there.

Paul Crowther has a very nice article in Research Fortnight entitled Trail of ineptitude. In this he sets the record straight over a number of things claimed by the STFC executive at the meeting at NAM. Some confusion over the claim of a 40% increase in academics is cleared up (there wasn't one according to the figures available from STFC)

So, why the factor of 10 difference? It seems that the figure of 40 per cent was taken out of context from a letter to astronomers from Cruise. The letter records that “the academic staff in the groups reviewed [for ‘rolling grant’ applications in 2007] has increased by 37 per cent since the last grant round for these groups.” This is not an illustration of an unsustainable increase in the number of astonomers, as Mason implied. The figure simply reflects a shift, among less than one third of astronomers nationally, towards bids for long-term ‘rolling’ grants instead of short-term responsive ones.

Assuming that Paul's figures are accurate this was quite a silly mistake to have made when trying to 'explain' the roots of the problem to a room full of your stakeholders. Actually, silly is too weak a word, this was a terrible mistake; I'm not sure how a cock-up like that would be viewed in industry.

Paul articulates well the annoyance many of us have experienced with regard to the 'spin' we see coming from both government:

The Prime Minister’s office responded to the e-petition earlier this month, arguing that claimed reductions in funding were simply unfulfilled “aspirations”. This was unwelcome ‘spin’ for the hundreds of scientists and engineers at the STFC’s laboratories who had been offered redundancy, and for the users of new facilities that faced the prospect of immediate closure.

and STFC:

[The STFC press release] noted that “funding for physics exploitation grants would remain broadly level in the next financial year [2008-09]”. The announcement led many observers to believe that there had been a U-turn over the planned reduction in grants of 25 per cent, which is part of the package of cuts. But it was nothing of the kind [RF 20/2/08, p18]. ...The result [of the astronomy grants round] was a dramatic reduction in the number of post-docs and a frank admission, from Mike Cruise, chairman of the STFC’s Astronomy Grants Panel, that severe damage had been done to “STFC’s ability to deliver its mission”.

Paul also tackled a subject close to his heart, the treatment of Gemini, by contrasting John Womersley's stalk warning of the dangers associated with the community's public complaining*
with Keith's claim that

“you were all ‘had’ by the Gemini Board”

Considering this statement was made in an open forum that contained scientists (who talk to their colleagues), journalists and bloggers this was a crass comment to make. As Paul implies, it will hardly endear the UK to our international colleagues, especially when Mason's version of events does not seem to match the public record, which is all we have to work from.

Remember that Prof. Rowan-Robinson corrected the claim that STFC was responding to the RAS report on our withdrawal from Gemini on the spot**. Yet another gaffe that should have been avoided?

Paul manages to end on a better note by cautiously praising STFC and the government for making those small steps that show they have started to respond to the massive concerns of the community. Though he wisely points to the continuing worries that we have in the way in which our input is being sought.

Panel members are uneasy about this topsy-turvy approach to decisions over scientific priorities but, without any alternative, they feel obliged to embrace any opportunity to reshuffle the rankings for projects within their area of expertise.

His last short, but simple, plea will resonate with many in the UK scientific community:

Please, though, no more spin.

For me this article has highlighted a deeper issue. Given the litany of cock-ups, gaffes, spin and patronising attitudes how can I, or anyone else in the community, have any faith in their actions from here-on out?

What can STFC really do now to address this lack of trust? It will take more than claims that they are listening and the baby-steps towards consultation, engagement and transparency that they are making. It will take time and even then 'once bitten, twice shy'. It is one reason why many scientists want big changes in the make-up of the upper-echelons of STFC.

* I am still trying to figure out when our complaining stopped being useful and became potentially very dangerous to our future. It was that momentous epoch that the advice from STFC (essentially we should be quiet) went from being very wrong to very right.

**To be clear Mason said that the RAS report was the first that 'he' had heard about it. He did not attempt to correct Rowan-Robinson so we can only assume that the President of the RAS' interpretation of Keith's meaning was correct. However Keith could argue that the STFC statement that the RAS were responding to went out without his knowledge. I find that immensely difficult to believe and, if true, it would constitute a major cock-up in the way STFC handles international agreements and relationships.

MST vs. GMT

2008-04-21T20:43:00.004+01:00

What on Earth?

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.*

What does that even mean??? Centre of the Earth?

It gets better though:

One geologist argued that unlike other longitudes, Mecca's was in perfect alignment to magnetic north.

What does 'perfect alignment' mean?

How does the fact that the position of the magnetic north pole varies throughout the day fit with this wonderful theory?

Or what about the fact that the measured position of the pole suggests it is merrily whizzing across the polar cap from Canada towards Siberia?

It doesn't look as if it is following a particular longitude that might be in 'perfect alignment'. What do you think?
(Image pinched from the Natural Resources Canada website: www.nrcan.gc.ca)

* To be fair I feel that although strictly accurate in that the scientists calling for the change were Muslim, the reporter could almost be giving the impression that 'all' Muslim scientists were making this demand.
I know this sounds pedantic but there are really stupid people out there who cannot tell the difference between some and all in this context as it fits their preconceived notions.
And I don't actually mean who you probably think I mean.

So I'm looking...

2008-04-21T12:18:00.002+01:00

...out of my window of my temporary office and marvelling that this whole observatory is within a forest. I don't mean that they made a big clearing and built the observatory, rather the observatory is actually within the forest, trees throughout partially concealing the different buildings on the site. It's very beautiful.

At the moment there is snow everywhere and it has been sunny and hot (in the sun). I notice that it has now clouded over for the first time., I am not sure whether this heralds snow or rain. Anyway I am up here for 4 weeks working on exciting collaborations and pumping out the papers, all paid for by the EU on the LAPBIAT programme. We have just had a productive meeting discussing our science ideas and who needs to talk to whom to do what. All good stuff and lots of potential.

It seems that I have picked an interesting time of year to come. Sadly it is unlikely that I will see much aurora as the background sky is too bright. It will need to be very intense emission and happen soon as the sky is only getting lighter at this time of year. However, it is likely that I will see most of the snow disappear during my time here with the rapid onset of spring. Unfortunately I might also catch the start of the mosquito season...

C&H homage

2008-04-21T08:53:00.002+01:00

Having been a fan of Bill Watterson's work for many, many years this cartoon made me laugh out loud.

It captures the spirit of the strip perfectly with a great pay-off at the end.

New Experiences

2008-04-20T17:07:00.004+01:00

Today I:

Walked across a frozen lake
Caught three Perch whilst ice fishing
Roasted sausages and fish in the open air then ate them
Ate some delicious Moose.

Shame I forgot my camera!

By the way I am in Finland now and will be here for a month

More soon.

STEREO

2008-04-15T12:58:00.003+01:00

There is a nice article on the BBC about STEREO, the twin satellites that monitor the Sun from positions up and and down orbit from the Earth. This gives them a unique view of the solar wind that buffets the Earth's magnetosphere and the impressive transients it contains.

There is a great movie of a coronal mass ejection (CME) being belched off the sun and ripping the tail from a comet.

This is a great mission that has only really just begun. STEREO will be really great when used in conjunction with other instruments both looking at the Sun and around the Earth. We can now track features in the solar wind to a level that is unprecedented and observe their effects on the Earth. Why does one coronal mass ejection cause one effect in the Earth's magnetic environments whilst another does something different? Well with STEREO we might be able to answer that by understanding the differences in those magnetic clouds.

Very cool.

This was reported at the European Geosciences Union annual general meeting in Vienna. This is one of the major meetings for solar-terrestrial physicists and it is why there is always some concern over whether MIST goes to the RAS NAM meetings as they often seem to collide. That is something that needs fixing!

Making best use of the available Space

2008-04-15T01:19:00.003+01:00

An interesting article by Paul Rincon at the BBC:

The British National Space Centre (BNSC) was set up to co-ordinate civil space activities across government.
The BBC has learned that staff will be moved to Swindon to sit with the agencies that fund UK space science.
BNSC will also lose some industrial duties to an agency tasked with fostering innovation in the UK economy.

How does this fit into the current STFC funding crisis debacle and the STFC trend towards space technology? Well this is interesting:

He commented: "This decision is in line with the Lyons review to de-centralise public sector activities outside London.
"As part of the move, the government is proposing to transfer some areas of management and funding of current DIUS-funded space programmes to the Technology Strategy Board."

This all needs some very careful watching.

For light relief this bit made me snigger:

The BNSC came in for robust criticism last year in a report by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.
The committee said the centre lacked leadership and co-ordination; a low profile and poor resources contributed to the problems.

Remind me, who chairs the UK Space board of BNSC?

OK cheap shot, I know.

STFC at the NAM

2008-04-14T23:14:00.002+01:00

Over a week has passed since the end of NAM 2008 and the STFC forum.

Obviously at that meeting it was requested that we cease criticising the STFC management and this blog took that to heart hence the lack of posting here.

Naw, not really. I have just been busy working and relaxing. For those who were not able to attend the forum and want to hear what was said then you can listen to the mp3 (one of several) recording of the event. My impression was that the panel got something of an easy ride, yet still managed to put people's back's up. A number of things bothered me about the forum and I'll try to articulate them here (not in chronological order).

Keith started with a 5 minute tutorial on DIUS accounting as it applies to STFC. Amusingly he later said that to understand the STFC figures a week's course is needed. His argument that he is sparing us having to look at the minutia in hordes of spreadsheets is illogical. By making them available there is no demand that anyone has to look at them; we are requesting that they are made available so those who want to look at them can look at them. Keith pointed to a problem himself by commenting that when STFC provide summary information someone jumps up and says that does not add up and hence the merry-go-round continues. Of course if it doesn't add up then someone will complain. That is the best argument for making it all available on-line Much kudos to Prof. Rowan Robinson for taking up Keith's offer to inspect the books (or should that be calling his bluff?).

Keith's answer to Andy Fabian regarding fEC does not seem to have settled much based upon the discussions I overheard outside of the forum. There is real worry that this is an issue of government giving with one hand whilst withholding with the other. Keith may be sure that this is new money going into the system but others seems just as convinced that money is going to be drained from elsewhere. To be fair to Keith this may be a question for DIUS and the Treasury.

Of course a colleague has posited that STFC are using fEC as 'smoke and mirrors'. There was some emphasis that we should be lobbying hard to get hold of this money within our universities. But this will not really help with the shortfall in grant funding. No grant = no fEC.

John Womersley needs to work on his comic timing as he seriously mis-judged the audience. As Chris Lintott said in his commentary he seemed to be the 'attack dog', and he came across as immensely patronising (as Andy Fabian pointed out) - an image that goes against the one that I had formed from the positive comments people had made about him. I understand that the vice chair of science board, Jenny Thomas, had this role at the HEP meeting in the same week.

If I remember correctly Womersley led the charge about us stopping criticising the STFC folks. Warned us that government is less likely to give us money if we make STFC management look bad. This bothers me a great deal and I think that this guy has it right:

The take home message from the leaders of the STFC? "Don't point out that we've messed things up or the Government will take even more money away." What was that Bill Clinton said about the politics of fear?

This came straight out of the Bush-Blair PR handbook. You see our criticism has a point - there is mistrust in the current management of STFC from a wide portion of the community (and a few members of the select committee have signed the EDM calling for Mason's resignation) and real anger at the way things have been done thus far. And nothing STFC has said has mollified that. Yes we can see some changes for the better though these have been offset with knee-jerk reactions such as the whole copyright cockup (STFC have, to their credit, now released those documents on line). The management reshuffle did little to assuage fears, same people are still in at the top though their titles have changed a bit. If Womersley is correct that by making the current STFC management look bad we risk cutting our future funding even further perhaps the simplest solution is to consider that word 'current'. Better that than a self-imposed gag and blind-eye to the problems we perceive.

Yes, as a community we can be more constructive and offer suggestions on how to do things better but we also have the right to voice our displeasure in the actions of the management. I happen to know that the consultation exercise resulted in some suggestions on how to do things better, such as the peer review process.

Oh yes peer review. The infamous Times article was mentioned and the anonymous sources came in for heavy fire. I don't think I blogged about it at the time (too lazy to check my archives) and nor did I have anything to do with it. Paul Crowther has a nice summary in his FAQ section where he offers a plausible explanation for how the high correlation between PPAN members and the PR rankings came about. I would suggest that the additional familiarity with those projects would potentially also have a subconscious effect. Conflicts of interest are properly dealt with in the process but the minutes of PPAN meetings tell us that they all give presentations on their work to each other; this could have the unintended consequence of boosting those projects in the eyes of their peers - an opportunity that I do not think others have. Something for them to consider before the next PR.

Also we were charged with attacking peer review and warned off.

This was a gigantic red herring!

People have not been complaining about peer review, we have been complaining about what passes for acceptable peer review in STFC. And STFC knows this so it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Without the advisory panels and only a small number of people from a limited portion of the STFC science portfolio it is understandable that the community does not trust the system. PPAN are not miracle workers and their tough job was made tougher without those panels. I thought Keith was playing a neat game of pass the buck there. He told us that it was PPAN's fault that there were no advisory panels though at least threw them a bone that the limited time frame made it difficult (sounded like a concern troll).

I wonder who dissolved the old PPARC panels? Surely with some foresight it would have been obvious that given the upcoming CSR and programmatic review (which they knew was happening) it made sense to keep those panels in place until a new system was devised. That was a major oversight. But Keith has made it clear that the buck stops well short of his office.

The only people who came out of that panel looking halfway decent were Walter Gear and Mike Bode. Monica Grady has the potential to be great strict school mistress given her telling off of the community for wanting PPAR back PPARC is gone!. Of course then we heard from her that although PPARC is dead STFC still has PPARC's research strategy and the current strategy has followed on from PPARC's strategy.

Listening again now I am not sure how a lot of what the panel said really does hang together in a logical and consistent fashion.

Oh well.

There have been a number of interesting reports from the BBC on this.
Susan Watts presented a piece on Newsnight that summed things up beautifully in terms of capturing some of the anger and emotion in the community (when watching the interview with Keith my dad commented that he would not buy a used car from him).
Paul Rincon has had a number of pieces reporting on the science at NAM and the forum. Two interesting articles gave an opportunity for Keith to have his say as well as for a typical astronomer (Paul Crowther in this case).

Newsnight and the STFC

2008-04-09T23:26:00.005+01:00

The much anticipated report on the funding crisis by Newsnight was just shown. Good stuff and with more on the website. I am sure this will be spun away as more 'whining scientists' not understanding how jolly lucky they all are. I almost expected the minister to say that all us space scientists and astronomers could start doing world class research with diamond. I think it may be the first time I have seen/heard him speak without uttering the words "13.6%".

A 'leading' space scientist was shown (you know who you are!) and even though they did not state he was talking about STP he still made some good points that hold up for astronomy.

The interview with Keef was interesting. Usually he seems a tad more unflappable; that was the first time I had head a quiver in his voice, he sounded distinctly flapped. Then again if I was being interviewed for Newsnight I would be bricking it as well.

We know that Keef isn't going to resign and we did learn that our anger is because we are scared of change - we knew that line was coming it went round like wildfire at NAM. I'm glad that Prof. Rowan-Robinson got in there and brushed such a stupid thing aside.

STFC say things like that about us and then tell us to stop calling for accountability and wonder why we get upset. See, I am not angry because I am scared of change, I am angry because of the crap job STFC have done since day one. And they may scold us and ask whether we could have done better but that just misses the point. It is their job to do better than this! Simple as that.

It is probably my natural bias but my impression was that the interviewed scientists came over much better than either the politician or the civil servant.

Oh and Brian Cox, for God's sake don't grow your hair that long again! 1997 must seem like a looong time ago.