2012
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Venus to appear in once–in–a–lifetime event
On 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It will take Venus about six hours to complete its transit, appearing as a small black dot on the Sun’s surface, in […]
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North Atlantic storm patterns throw light on 1987 gale
The cyclone that brought about the devastating winds that battered the UK in the great storm of October 1987 was exceptional in both its strength and path across the south of the country. This is the finding of a new study which has analysed the places where sting jets—an area that develops in some cyclones […]
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Award winning week for Physics World
Physics World, the membership magazine of the Institute of Physics, has won two awards in the space of a few days. Physics World has been named best ‘Magazine – Professional Association or Royal College’ at the annual MemCom Awards held in London, UK. The Physics World team also picked up ‘Best Use of Social Media’ […]
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IOP Publishing announces 2012 Library Advisory Boards
2012 IOP Library Advisory boards IOP Publishing is dedicated to perfecting the user experience for all of our customers. To ensure that we achieve this aim, we are delighted to announce a series of library advisory board meetings for 2012. The initiative is designed to help the company develop products and services that are tailor […]
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Physics to tackle how food is cooked in future
In this month’s Physics World, Sidney Perkowitz, Candler Professor of Physics Emeritus at Emory University, explains how applied physics led to the innovation of flameless cooking in the late 19th century and addresses the challenge of feeding a rapidly growing population in a cleaner, more efficient way. In this article, Perkowitz highlights the work of […]
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Engineered robot interacts with live fish
A bioinspired robot has provided the first experimental evidence that live zebrafish can be influenced by engineered robots. Results published today, 8 June, in IOP Publishing’s journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, provide a stepping stone on the path to using autonomous robots in an open environment to monitor and control fish behaviour. In the future, water-based […]
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Physicists predict success of movies at the box office
A group of Japanese scientists have surprised themselves by being able to predict the success or failure of blockbuster movies at the box office using a set of mathematical models. The researchers, publishing their study today, 15 June, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society’s New Journal of Physics, used the effects of […]
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Power-generating knee strap hints at end for batteries
Battery-powered devices could soon be a thing of the past thanks to a group of UK researchers who have created a novel energy harvester to power some of the latest wearable gadgets. By strapping the energy harvester to the knee joint, a user could power body-monitoring devices such as heart rate monitors, pedometers and accelerometers […]
