Research Software Forum

We will be hosting a Research Software Forum that will happen on 22 November, 12-2pm, in the Physics Building. This is a free event aimed at all academics and PDRAs/Research Fellows that use or develop software as part of their research. To find more details and register, please see below.

Details
=====

Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/research-software-forum-registration-39661186677

Do you use software in your research?

Do you write bits of code?

Do you supervise people who write code?

If you answered yes to any of these, then this is for you. We are hosting a meeting / forum for researchers from all University faculties who use software as part of their research. With a particular focus on Sustainable Software

– that is ensuring your software is correct and reproducible.

We will start with a short (15min) talk on the Software Sustainability Institute (software.ac.uk) and sustainable software, and then have a series of lightning talks (3-5 minutes) on just about anything related to using software or computers for research. Please feel free to submit a talk. It could be about:

– a piece of software and how you use it in your research

– a module/library/package you have found helpful

– your git workflow

– some software that you think more people should use

– an introduction to concepts such as testing or debugging

– or even just something that you think might be useful for researchers using software to know.

If it is related to research, software, and computing then please submit something – if you think it could help someone, present it! These are not aimed to be comprehensive talks, but to start conversations (inside or outside the meeting).

We will finish the meeting with lunch and discussion on various topics
such as:

– Training we can provide.

– Support you would like to see from central services.

– Research Software Engineers, and the cases for them.

And anything else – including topics you can nominate on the day.

Lunch will be provided, so sign up and join us!

We hope this to be the first in a regular series of research computing meetings at Lancaster, dedicated to
improving the computing experience and skills of researchers from all faculties.

Robin Long

 

Ventilation fire damper inspection

Next week 2 engineers will require access to the inspection hatches on the ventilation ducting. Where possible these have been put in risers but some are in labs. The inspection will take approximately 15 minutes and will require step ladders to gain access. We aim to keep inconvenience to a minimum.

Shonah Ion

 

Reporting near misses

Can I remind everyone to report any near misses as well as actual accidents via the accident reporting form on the University safety web pages. http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/depts/safety/index.html By reporting a near miss – that is an incident that could have resulted in an accident – we can take action to prevent an accident occurring.

Shonah Ion

 

Physics exit doors

Emergency exit doors are for exactly that, emergencies. We make ourselves and our colleagues vulnerable when we leave the building insecure.

Shonah Ion

 

Emergency Exits

Can all staff be reminded that the Emergency Exit doors in Physics are used for that purpose only. They have in the past been left open, as they are not self-closing, leaving the building insecure overnight. Regards Martin

Martin Ward

 

Condensed Matter Physics Seminar: “All optical generation of surface plasmons in graphene”

Date: 10 November 2017, 3pm-4pm
Venue: C36 Physics
Speaker: Prof. Euan Hendry, School of Physics, University of Exeter.

Abstract: Surface plasmons in graphene offer a compelling route to many useful photonic technologies. As a plasmonic material, graphene offers several intriguing properties, such as excellent electro-optic tuneability, crystalline stability, large optical nonlinearities and extremely high electromagnetic field concentration. As such, recent demonstrations of surface plasmon excitation in graphene using near-field scattering of infrared light have received intense interest.

Here I will present an all-optical plasmon coupling scheme which takes advantage of the intrinsic nonlinear optical response of graphene. Free-space, visible light pulses are used to generate surface plasmons in a planar graphene sheet using difference frequency wave mixing to match both the wavevector and energy of the surface wave. By carefully controlling the phase matching conditions, we show that one can excite surface plasmons with a defined wavevector and direction across a large frequency range, with an estimated photon efficiency in our experiments approaching. The physical origin of this effect, likely involving photo-thermal currents, will be discussed.

Gráinne Wilkinson

 

Particle Physics Seminar: Towards the next generation ATLAS Pixel Front-End chip and Readout

Date: 10 November 2017, 13:45 – 14:45
Venue: Physics C36
Speaker: Timon Heim, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Pixel Detectors are the key component at the heart of every contemporary accelerator-based particle physics experiment. The next generation of accelerators will pose severe challenges and require significant detector upgrades. The RD53 collaboration has been specifically created to address those challenges by performing R&D towards the future pixel detector readout chips of the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the HL-LHC.

The RD53A demonstrator chip is the first large pixel sensor readout chip designed by the RD53 collaboration. While RD53A is a half-size demonstrator compared to the envisaged final chip size, it implements all of the critical features to operate a pixel detector successfully in the HL-LHC environment. The presentation will describe its features and results from earlier prototype chips, which show the expected performance.

The 20-fold increase in bandwidth from 160Mbps to 5Gbps compared to the current generation pixel readout chip also makes a substantial upgrade of the DAQ systems for testing necessary, and it will be addressed how the YARR DAQ system is improved to be ready for testing of the RD53A chip.

Gráinne Wilkinson

 

New Physics Mailing Lists

We have new mailing lists for Physics, can you use the following mailing lists from now on and delete the old ones from your email autocomplete.

Note the old lists ended with @py-mail.lancs.ac.uk the new ones end @lists.lancs.ac.uk

The main lists and their replacements are as follows:

Physics-staff@py-mail.lancs.ac.uk is replaced by physics-staff@lists.lancs.ac.uk

Physics-pg@py-mail.lancs.ac.uk is replaced by physics-pg@lists.lancs.ac.uk

Physics-academic-staff@py-mail.lancs.ac.uk is replaced by Physics-academic-staff@lists.lancs.ac.uk

Physics-research-staff@py-mail.lancs.ac.uk is replaced by Physics-research-staff@lists.lancs.ac.uk

Physics-teaching-staff@py-mail.lancs.ac.uk is replaced by Physics-teaching-staff@lists.lancs.ac.uk

If you have any issues can you let me know

Rob Lewsey

 

Safety Induction

The next induction will take place on Thursday the 14th of December at 2:30 pm in A27 Physics. Any new members of staff,  post-doctoral researchers or anyone who wants a refresher please come along with a pen.

Shonah Ion

 

Physics Christmas Lunch – Thursday 21st December

The Physics Christmas lunch will take place at 1300hrs on Thursday 21st December at Greaves Park, Lancaster. Please see details of the menu at http://greavespark.co.uk/christmas-fayre-menu/

To secure your place please pay me and I’ll take your menu choices at the same time. The cost is £15.95 for two courses for £20.50 for three courses. It would be great if you could try and bring something like the right amount of money although I could try and offload some of my old £1 coins!

I need your menu choices by Weds 6 December COP at the very latest.

Gráinne Wilkinson