Foreign scientists lead US science
An earlier report from the National Research Council has already expressed concern that the US may not retain its leadership in science and technology. The report speculated that the supply of foreign...
Universities are like businesses – it’s official
Stanley and colleagues looked at five different measures of research activity in universities: the annual expenditure on R&D, the number of papers published each year, the number of patents awarde...
UK university launches science fiction degree
“Most people in the UK receive their science education through science fiction so it makes sense to study the link between science fiction and science fact,” says Brake. The three year deg...
Café society gets scientific
French cafés have long been a meeting point for intellectuals. In the 18th century Victor Hugo met fellow revolutionaries at the Procope in Paris, and in the 1950s groups of existentialists, incl...
Helping physics to help itself
There is no doubt that the world has an increasingly intense love-hate relationship with science. Physics certainly does not escape this deep ambivalence, and we naturally wonder if there is anything ...
Physics looks to thefuture
The three-day workshop was held in Debreccen in Hungary last month and involved physicists from both eastern and western Europe. Delegates were concerned about a number of ‘serious problems̵...
Science and societies
Two of the oldest and largest physical societies in the world celebrate anniversaries this year. The Institute of Physics, which publishes this magazine, can trace its roots back to the Physical Socie...
Learning lessons about ethics
To what extent should a formal education in ethics be part of the university physics curriculum? When this question is raised in the physics community, the response is often that there is no significa...
Book your busman’s holiday
When it comes to employing new graduates, scientific institutions are increasingly keen to take on people who have practical scientific experience as well as the academic understanding that a physics ...
How to rebuild Russian science
Transforming the Soviet Union’s highly centralized communist regime into an open, democratic society based on free-market principles has proved to be much harder than people at first thought. Li...
