Table of contents

Particle Zoo – the Californian company that makes plush toys of all your favourite sub-atomic particles – is branching out.

Any "foreigners" attending a big, scientific gathering in Japan should take note of the following cautionary tale.

"Boffins in 'Doomsday' rap" was the classic headline in the Sun newspaper last year about the "LHC Rap" –a video posted on You Tube by science writer Kate McAlpine shortly before the Large Hadron Collider was originally switched on at CERN.

You might think that removing hazardous plutonium from a nuclear reactor would be the preserve of specialist industrial cleaning agents.

The concept of a "random walk" has been widely used to describe many real-world systems from the Brownian motion of smoke particles to the fluctuation of prices on the stock market. The mathematics is usually explained though the analogy of a person dictating their movements by the toss of a coin: get heads, for example, and they move one step to the right; get tails and they shuffle one step to the left. After many coin tosses, the person's position is random – though, statistically, it is likely to be near the starting point.

Researchers in the UK are set to carry out clinical tests on a new laser technique that could ultimately lead to the rapid and reliable detection of bone disorders. The method, which is based on a novel version of Raman spectroscopy, could offer doctors a way of obtaining the most detailed characterization yet of bones.

Watch a very narrow jet of water as it falls earthwards and you will notice it break up into smaller droplets under surface tension.

With their unique mechanical and electronic properties, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) – sheets of carbon just one atom thick that are rolled up into tubes – could eventually lead to a new generation of ultra-fast electronic devices. Indeed, researchers have already used SWNTs in transistors. But what is needed now are ways of separating nanotubes according to their "chirality" – the relative orientation of the hexagonal lattice to the axis of the tube – as it is this property that dictates whether a SWNT is a metal or a semiconductor.

It may sound like something from a highly stylized science-fiction film but imagine a soldier who could detect threats by seeing in all directions at once. A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has taken the first step to turning this futuristic vision into reality with a new imaging technique that involves light-detecting fibres that could be woven into a flexible web or even a soldier's uniform, writes James Dacey.

Physicists have reacted angrily to plans by one of the UK's leading research councils to slash funding for a number of key national facilities. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) will cut support for the Diamond light source and make "reductions in facility operations" at the ISIS neutron source and the Central Laser Facility. STFC chief executive Keith Mason blames the cuts on the fall in the value of the pound, which has led to a 15.1% rise in the STFC's subscriptions to CERN and other international facilities from £214.9m last year to £247.3m in 2009–2010.

Universities in the UK are providing record levels of services to businesses, according to a recent survey by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The survey concludes that the income earned by universities and higher-education colleges in the UK is now worth a total of £2.812bn – an increase of 6.5% from the previous year.

A plan to replace two aging nuclear reactors in Ontario, Canada, with Advanced CANDU Reactors (ACR) has been rejected by the provincial government due to concerns over ballooning costs. The rejected bid, which was made by the state-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), adds to the woes of an agency that is already facing rumoured privatization of its business to build and maintain nuclear reactors.

The Spanish government has come under fire after deciding to keep an ageing nuclear power station running until 2013 – four years after it was originally meant to close down. Nuclenor, which operates the Garoña plant near Burgos in the north of the country, had wanted its licence extended even further –until 2019 –and is now preparing to take the government to court. However, environmental groups are also unhappy at the extension, which they say goes against prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's manifesto commitment to phase out the country's nuclear plants in favour of solar and wind power.

A physicist in the UK has set up a new website for sharing preprints following criticisms about the way that the popular arXiv site is moderated. Called viXra, which is arXiv backwards, the rival server – unlike arXiv – places no restrictions on the sorts of papers that can be posted. "This is an experiment to find out what kind of stuff is not managing to get onto arXiv, as well as being a serious archive for people to put their research in," says Philip Gibbs, an independent physicist based in Essex and creator of viXra.

The vast majority of Americans think that science has a positive benefit for society, according to a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Element 112, known until now as Ununbium, has been given the new name of Copernicium, with the symbol Cp, in honour of the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

After five failed attempts owing to bad weather in Florida, the Space Shuttle Endeavour was finally launched on its way to the $ 100bn International Space Station (ISS) last month.

Government spending on science and technology development in Pakistan will jump by about a quarter in 2009–2010 compared with the previous fiscal year, with big increases planned for nuclear physics and higher education. In late June the country's National Assembly approved a budget of 48.2bn Pakistani rupees (Rs), or about £361m, for new science projects.

China's leading natural-sciences organization has released a "50-year plan" charting the country's future scientific development in 18 key areas, including space science, energy and materials research. The document from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) will be updated every five years, and is intended as a "road map" for progress rather than a detailed plan, according to its authors.

J Reece Roth, a retired University of Tennessee plasma physicist convicted of violating the American Arms Export Control Act, is planning to appeal against a four-year prison sentence handed down last month. "It's an appeal against everything, including the verdict and the sentence," says his lawyer Thomas Dundon.

Lying on the north-east coast of Japan, 120 km from Tokyo, the village of Tokai is one of the richest in the world per capita. The reason is simple. More than half of its 35 000 inhabitants work for the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), which operates numerous research institutes in the area as well as four nuclear reactors on the village's coastline with the Pacific Ocean.

Here we go again. Just when you thought that the financial woes of the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) had gone away, welcome to another round of cuts. Set up in April 2007, the STFC could not have got off to a more disastrous start. Faced with an £80m shortfall in its budget, the council – seemingly without consulting the scientific community – pulled out of its involvement in the International Linear Collider and withdrew support for the Gemini telescopes (before sheepishly rejoining the project, but only after selling half of its observing time to other partners on the project). Grants for individual projects in particle physics and astronomy were also slashed by 25%. Physicists were, not surprisingly, unhappy, and even MPs attacked the STFC bosses for "misjudgements [that] could significantly damage Britain's research reputation in [physics]".

In 2004 the European Commission (EC) adopted a directive restricting occupational exposure to electromagnetic fields. This directive (2004/40/CE), which examines the possible health risks of the electromagnetic fields from mobile phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other devices, concluded that upper limits on radiation and applied electromagnetic fields are necessary to prevent workers from suffering any undue acute health effects. But although not initially intended, the biggest impact of the directive could be on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is used in hospitals worldwide to produce images of unrivalled quality of the brain and other soft tissues.

When Physics World carried out a readers' survey to mark its 20th anniversary in October 2008, in the main the editors took a light-hearted approach. They asked readers to answer nine multiple-choice questions on matters such as who inspired them to do physics, whether they mind being unpopular at parties, and what was the top physics discovery of the previous 20 years. A summary of the results appeared last year on the physicsworld.com blog (22 December 2008).

As your news story "Europe's education experiment" (June pp12–13) reported, the UK government may well view the country as now being compliant with the Bologna process, which aims to create a common European higher-education system. This is because the government persuaded the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) to agree that Bologna recognition should be based on learning outcomes, and then it established the (UK) Framework for Higher Education Qualifications, which purports to demonstrate this compliance. The argument is fundamentally that students in England can accomplish in four (short) years what in other systems requires five (long) ones.

I am writing in support of Philip Moriarty's article on "The economic-impact fallacy" (June pp16–17). While we all welcome the increases in UK research funding over the last decade, there needs be to a recognition that this was required to compensate for previous chronic underfunding and that, despite what Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called a "knowledge economy", our overall spending still lags significantly behind our competitors. Given the gulf between the rhetoric and the reality, articles by Moriarty and others reflect the sense of disbelief, which most of us feel, that the UK government now also seems to want to limit us all to the kind of shortterm, near-market research that can never hope to give the UK any sustainable lead with respect to (for example) the emerging economies in the Far East.

Reading and re-reading Lee Smolin's article entitled "The unique universe" (June pp21–26), I was struck by the serendipity of your publishing in the same issue Geoff Davies' letter on defining science (p18). Both authors use the idea of "reality", albeit in somewhat different contexts.

The so-called string wars – a sometimes heated online debate on the merits of string theory – began in 2006 with the publication of two critical books, Lee Smolin's The Trouble With Physics and Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong.

Both Eugenie Samuel Reich's article on the Schön fraud (May pp24–29) and the letters you published in response (July p19) have treated the case as a matter affecting science. Yet it is much broader. False information is disseminated on a regular basis in the public media, less so in professional journals. Some people may be harmed by that misinformation; others may gain – for example by people spreading rumours that affect the stock market. It can happen with the auction of items based on false provenance. It can also happen by people claiming credit for something they have not done.

In Cris W Barnes' review of Charles Seife's book Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Art of Wishful Thinking (May pp42–43), Barnes, as a member of the fusion community, admits to "wishful thinking" on the basis that "a strong and exciting vision always helps focus and drive effort". This may be true, but wishful thinking has also distorted and ignored several aspects of the fusion dream.

I would like to pass on my experience with regard to Tim Simpson's comment on hot-water heating (June p19). I had a solar water-heating system installed on my roof here in Southern France in 2008. When I spoke to two "satisfied customers" about their systems, neither could tell me how much they saved in energy costs, and they did not seem to realize that the "auxiliary" immersion heater – which is permanently fitted on all systems, including my own – would come on whenever the temperature in the solar-heated tank dropped below the thermostat setting. This year we were well into the month of May before we could sometimes rely on the solar heat alone. I have fitted a time switch to the immersion heater and I switch it off completely when we have periods of full sunshine, but it is not easy to match the need for hot water to the possible availability.

The prospect of human-induced climate change has many people worried. In addition to the sheer scale of the problem, there is also the challenge of it being so complex. The Earth's behaviour is fiendishly hard to predict in detail. Computer power is not enough: models need to be based on solid physical insights and a good understanding of the Earth's current behaviour – and also its history.

When nature had to choose an element as the basis for life, it chose carbon. If I had to guess why, I would say the reason was carbon's extraordinary versatility. Bonding between carbon atoms is exceptionally strong; indeed, the strongest materials on Earth are all made of carbon. However, bonding between carbon and other elements, though stable, can easily be changed by chemical reactions. The resulting compounds are often surprisingly different from one another. For example, a pair of carbon atoms bonded together can accept one, two or three hydrogen atoms, forming ethyne, ethene and ethane – chemicals used in welding, anaesthesia and vodka-making, respectively.

Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan was perhaps the greatest Indian mathematician of the modern age. In 1987, to mark the centenary of his birth, a jubilee procession took place through the streets of Kumbakonam, his South Indian hometown. An elephant carried a life-sized, flower-garlanded portrait of the genius, wearing his Cambridge mortarboard. Meanwhile, in Madras (now Chennai), the then prime minister Rajiv Ghandi signed the first copy of the latest edition of Ramanujan's writings and presented it to Ramanujan's widow, Janaki.

Fermilab, the scientific research facility, has for the past 37 years transformed a 10-square-mile patch of the Illinois prairie into the frontier of high-energy particle physics. Fermilab, the book, is the first written history of this unique place, covering both the birth of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and its journey to its current position as a world centre of "megascience". Yet Fermilab is far from being a dry historical account. It spans the entire spectrum of what is required to establish a cutting-edge facility and perform research there – from organizational aspects and technological choices to the sociology and politics of funding and site selection. The creation of Fermilab was a far cry from the establishment of a shining light on the prairie; rather, it was a practical solution for passionate researchers, driven to do physics amid the real-world constraints of shrinking federal science budgets.

So what is the site about?Planet SciCast is an online repository for short films about science – a bit like a science-specific, moderated version of YouTube. As of July 2009, the site hosts over 150 films on topics ranging from CERN's Large Hadron Collider to fun things to do with treacle. New content appears on the site every few weeks, and some films include links to information about related experiments, demos and activities. The site also runs an annual competition aimed at getting more people involved in making science films, with prizes in categories like "best original score" and "best presenter".

In 1901 Guglielmo Marconi succeeded in linking Britain and North America by radio. Physicists were aghast. Did this upstart not realize that the curvature of the Earth shapes the Atlantic into an impenetrable, 100-mile-high mountain of water? Your problem, said Marconi. Our opportunity, said Britain, whose empire, then at its height, was founded as much on superior communications as on military muscle.

Pythagoras's theorem is one of the most familiar in mathematics.

Physicists who have grown accustomed to their field's more esoteric notions run the risk of also becoming immune to their novelty.

Have you ever squirmed when reading coverage of science news in the media? Rolled your eyes when you saw a headline summing up a sophisticated science result in one line? Do you ever come to the conclusion that some complex subject matter has been condensed to the point where it may collapse in on itself, forming a mini black hole that will trap the real scientific understanding forever? And most importantly, have you ever asked why things might be like this, and what you could do about it?

What sparked your interest in physics? I have always been fascinated with science, and when I was 12 or 13, I was fortunate to have teachers who encouraged this interest. My father also had an aptitude for science and mathematics; he was a naturally intelligent individual who left high school before graduating and became a dental technician because his family needed him to work – this was during the Great Depression. So I believe this interest is in my genes.

Blue-LED developer bags award Semiconductor physicist Isamu Akasaki of Nagoya University and Meijo University in Japan will receive the 2009 Kyoto Prize for his role in developing the blue lightemitting diode (LED). Initially regarded as a technological impossibility, the blue LED has found applications in signage, the Blu-ray optical recording medium and energy-conserving lighting since it became commercially available in the late 1990s – more than 30 years after Akasaki began researching the properties of galliumnitride semiconductors. The ¥50m (£325 000) prize has been awarded annually for the past 25 years for "significant contributions to the scientific, cultural and spiritual betterment of mankind".

Last year at a science networking event in a Central London pub, I was cornered by the manager of an "alternative healing centre", who regaled me with stories about her patients' miraculous recoveries from ailments that modern medicine had been unable to address. "After all," she said, leaning forward with the air of someone confiding an esoteric, but unassailable, argument, "if a butterfly flapping its wings in a forest can cause a hurricane, imagine what a positive attitude can do!"