Intute blog

National Science and Engineering Week will run from the 12th to the 21st March. This year’s theme is ‘Earth’ in support of International Year of Biodiversity

see also:
Heated debate on geoengineering solutions to climate change (Irish Times)
Geoengineering divides scientists (Environment Research Web)

The incredibly powerful earthquake which struck Chile on February 27th may have been the fifth largest since records began, but it has also had a surprising effect on the length of an Earth day!

At magnitude 8.8, the quake was in itself a huge event, yet it has also changed the Earth’s figure axis (the axis about which Earth’s mass is balanced) by approximately 3 inches. The consequence of this – in layman’s terms – is that the length of an Earth day has actually been shortened! Of course the figure is not seriously significant, as it is just over a millionth of a second (1.26 microseconds), yet it shows the effect a quake of this sort can have.

Chile quake

To learn more about these changes, and the science behind them, take a look at the press release on Science Daily.

Source:
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (2010, March 2). Chilean quake may have shortened Earth days. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 9, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/03/100302084522.htm

Whilst the foodies among us dream of World Pi(e) Day, those of more mathematical leaning will of course be aware that this coming Sunday, March 14, is World Pi Day (03.14). To celebrate the event, a mathematician has teamed up with a magician in a bid to perform reportedly “the world’s largest online magic trick”.

Dr James Grime, a Cambridge mathematician involved in the Millennium Mathematics Project, and magician Brian Brushwood will be performing a maths-based trick on Twitter and hope to get as many people involved as possible.

Grime commented: “World Pi Day is the perfect day for this unique event. It’s a bit of an experiment really. We think this will be a record-breaking event and we want you to get involved and be part of history!”

The event will take place as part of this year’s Cambridge Science Festival. The pair will subsequently reveal how the trick was performed on a forthcoming episode of the Internet series Scam School, hosted by Brushwood.

For more details of how to get involved, check out pidaymagic.com, or follow #pidaymagic on Twitter. You can also search for resources about pi on Intute.

No doubt the trick will provide plenty of food for thought!

Over the weekend the Iraqi people have been voting.

Barack Obama hailed it as a milestone for democracy in the area

Here are some sites where you can discover more about the background to the elections, any associated violence and their outcomes.

The IFES site has an election guide with background information on the elections and electoral system. you can also look at historic election results.

The Independent High Electoral Commission was established in 2004 as the Independent Election Commission of Iraq (IECI). It is responsible for overseeing the conduct of elections in the region. Its English language website includes background information on the electoral system, full text electoral laws and regulations

United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) was created in 2004 to assist in the social, economic and political reconstruction of Iraq, following the Gulf War. Its website also has coverage of the 2010 elections.

News coverage can be found on the Al-Jazeera website which also has some interesting blogs and YouTube videos from reporters on the scene and Iraqi voters.

The New York Times also has photos, comment and video film from the scene

The Carnegie Endowment for International peace has more academic analysis plus background guides

Further links to useful websites can be found by browising the Intute catalogue.

Undergraduates in the sciences need a level of mathematical ability that few possess when they first enter higher education. Consequently, curricula are designed with this in mind and maths support is invariably provided for all. This presents challenges for staff and students.

This informal meeting will allow participants to hear about developments in pre-university mathematics and also allow the sharing of approaches, resources and concerns.

The meeting will start with an overview of pre-university maths qualifications, followed by parallel sessions for the different disciplines (chemistry, physics) to discuss issues and share experiences and approaches to teaching maths to undergraduate students.

There is no registration fee for this meeting for those working in UK HE; lunch and refreshments will be provided. See the meeting website for registration details.

Event announcement courtesy of The Higher Education Academy UK Physical Sciences Centre.

Findings from a panel of more than 40 international experts have brought them to conclude that a massive asteroid impact did indeed spell the end for the dinosaurs, according to a newly-published report in Science journal. Whilst this theory has long been in place, other studies have suggested that massive volcanic activity in India’s Deccan Traps may have been an alternative destructive force which triggered the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction 65 million years ago.

Following a comprehensive study of more than two decades worth of scientific evidence and findings, the scientists came down firmly on the side of the asteroid impact which occurred at Chicxulub, Mexico. To give some idea of the scale of the impact, the evidence indicates that the rock would have been roughly the size of the Isle of Wight and would have unleashed a force equivalent to a billion Hiroshima bombs. The cataclysmic chain of events, such as mega earthquakes and tsunamis, and a global change in atmospheric conditions, would have wiped out the dinosaurs, and indeed much of life on Earth, in mere days.

The key indicators for the asteroid impact were the presence of large quantities of iridium in samples dating to the time of the extinction and the appearance of “shocked quartz” in rock layers. Iridium is extremely rare on Earth, yet common in asteroids and space bodies, whilst shocked quartz is only discovered in meteorites and at the sites of nuclear explosions.

Reference:
Peter Schulte, Laia Alegret, Ignacio Arenillas, José A. Arz, Penny J. Barton, Paul R. Bown, Timothy J. Bralower, Gail L. Christeson, Philippe Claeys, Charles S. Cockell, Gareth S. Collins, Alexander Deutsch, Tamara J. Goldin, Kazuhisa Goto, José M. Grajales-Nishimura, Richard A. F. Grieve, Sean P. S. Gulick, Kirk R. Johnson, Wolfgang Kiessling, Christian Koeberl, David A. Kring, Kenneth G. MacLeod, Takafumi Matsui, Jay Melosh, Alessandro Montanari, Joanna V. Morgan, Clive R. Neal, Douglas J. Nichols, Richard D. Norris, Elisabetta Pierazzo, Greg Ravizza, Mario Rebolledo-Vieyra, Wolf Uwe Reimold, Eric Robin, Tobias Salge, Robert P. Speijer, Arthur R. Sweet, Jaime Urrutia-Fucugauchi, Vivi Vajda, Michael T. Whalen, and Pi S. Willumsen. The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary. Science, 2010: 327 (5970): 1214-1218 DOI: 10.1126/science.1177265

Discover more about asteroid impacts on Intute.

Over the past few months, we have received a lot of feedback asking us about the future of the Virtual Training Suite (VTS).

We are pleased to be able tell you that we now have some good news about future funding for this service.

JISC have confirmed that they will provide a year’s maintenance funding from August 2010 to assist the Virtual Training Suite in moving towards a self-sustaining business model. During the next year, we will therefore be:

• maintaining the current suite of over 60 subject based Internet research skills tutorials
• developing a new toolkit to allow the community to adapt existing tutorials and/or create their own tutorials using their own content
• to develop and implement a licensing model to sustain the Virtual Training Suite beyond August 2011

The project team are currently in the process of updating the remaining tutorials to be brought into the new design, to be launched in early Summer 2010, and are also starting work on planning our new tutorial toolkit. Very soon we will start some market research and requirements gathering work to find out what our users want most from the new Virtual Training Suite, so watch this space to get involved.

More information about the project will be posted on the Virtual Training Suite website soon. In the meantime, please address any queries to paul.smith@bristol.ac.uk

In a new 5 part series for the BBC, Manchester University’s Professor Brian Cox will be examining a range of Solar system phenomena. Cox will be travelling to a number of locations around Earth to compare sights found on our home planet with those observed in distant bodies.

In the first episode of the series, physicist Cox will focus his attention on the Sun, covering topics such as gravity, Solar wind, heat, light and eclipses, the latter demonstrated in stunning fashion with a visit to India.

Visit the BBC site to discover more about Brian Cox and this fascinating series.
Series home page

Wonders of the Solar System premieres on BBC2 on Sunday March 7th at 9pm.

Intute describes thousands of high-quality Web resources about astronomy and the Solar system in its catalogue. Why not visit our astronomy section and learn more!

Here is the latest round up from Intute and the LSE Library

Aiming High for Young People: Engaging through social media guidance from the Department for Children, Schools and Families how youth workers can use social media to engage with young people.

Sexualisation of Young People Review This is an independent review by psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos into the sexualisation of young people. Commissioned by the Home Office, the review forms part of the government’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls and looks at how sexualised images and messages may be affecting the development of children and young people and influencing cultural norms. It also examines the evidence for a link between sexualisation and violence.

Attitudes, Values and Perceptions: Muslims and the general population in 2007-08 - This report uses data from the 2007-08 Citizenship Survey to explore Muslim communities’ views, attitudes and perceptions on a range of issues, including cohesion, values and perceptions of religious prejudice. The views of the Muslim community are compared with those of the population as a whole

Putting the Frontline First: Meeting the local government challenge

Mindspace: Influencing behaviour through public policy- Cabinet Office This report explores how behaviour change theory can help meet current policy challenges, such as how to reduce crime, tackle obesity, or ensure environmental sustainability.

Department for Transport: The failure of Metronet Public Accounts Committee. HC 390.

Progress on the Implementation of DFID’s HIV/AIDS Strategy: Government Response to the Committee’s First Report of Session 2009-10 International Development.HC 342 International development Committee.

The future of aviation: Government response to the Committee’s First Report of Session 2009-10 Transport committee HC 388

Cocaine Trade Home Affairs Committee – HC 74-I

Welsh prisoners in the prison estate: follow-up Welsh Affairs Committee

Home Office Research Report 32: Child sex offender review public disclosure pilots - A process evaluation

Magee Legal Aid Review -

Equality and Human Rights Commission- HC 124 Public Accounts committee assessment of its work.

Preparations for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games: Progress report February 2010 National Audit Office report HC: 298,

Tackling problem drug use National Audit Office report HC: 297,

Evaluation of the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal: Final report

The New Deal for Communities Experience: A final assessment

An Assessment and Practical Guidance on Next Generation Access Risk in the UK: Final report

GCSE Attainment by Pupil Characteristics: England 2008-09 – Updated

National Indicators 93 and 94: Percentage of pupils making two levels of progress in English and in mathematics between key stage one and key stage two in England 2008-09

Ofsted: Children on rights and responsibilities report on what children think of their rights.

Leading the Way Through Social Enterprise: The social enterprise pathfinder programme evaluation

Drug Misusing Offenders: Results from the 2008 cohort for England and Wales

Prolific and Other Priority Offenders: Results from the 2008 cohort for England and Wales

Food Technologies: Findings from the 2008 British social attitudes survey what do people think of GM foods etc.

Since we posted the news about the JISC funding cuts for Intute, many of you have been in touch with us to ask about the future of Informs.

We are pleased to tell you that we now have some good news about funding for this service.

JISC have just confirmed that they will provide transition funding from August 2010 to enable Informs to move towards a sustainable business model, and therefore to a secure future.  In effect this means we have funding:

• to maintain Informs at its existing service level in 2010-11
• to refresh the software in line with user requirements
• to develop and implement a membership business model to sustain it after that date

The project team here at Intute are now getting started on the work, and our first priority is to do a health check of the software and to collect feedback from the Informs users.  We know that some of you have experienced some problems with the software in recent months, so we need you to get in touch with us and tell us your opinions about using Informs since the launch of the I-frames version and new editor interface last year.

Tell us what works and what doesn’t work, and if you have noticed any issues please do contact us and give us as much information as possible.  You can use the Informs-users JISCMail list, or get in touch via the Intute Helpdesk, selecting “Informs” in the “Type of request” box.

More information about the project will be posted on the Informs website soon.